disquisition
/ˌdɪskwɪˈzɪʃ(ə)n
/noun
A long or elaborate essay or discussion on a particular subject: nothing can kill a radio show quicker than a disquisition on intertextual analysis...
- We find textbooks, readers, grammars; learned articles on scientific subjects; disquisitions on culture and public policy; even an ambitious early novel-all still virtually unknown today.
- The reader who opens his Aristotle and expects to find a systematic disquisition on some philosophical subject or an orderly textbook of scientific instruction, will be brought up short: Aristotle's treatises are not like that.
- Otherwise a disquisition on the subject will appear to be elusive and simply beyond our ken.
Synonyms
essay, dissertation, treatise, paper, discourse, tract, monograph, study, article;
discussion, lecture, address, presentation, speech, talk, monologue;
analysis, commentary, review, critique
Derivatives
disquisitional
- I rarely get the impression of passion and fairness I get with Prager, or disquisitional tenacity I hear in Medved.
- Moffat Johnston is the garrulous father, eagerly philosophic and disquisitional.
- This slave is enamored of his independent way of life and fond of his disquisitional writings.
Origin
Late 15th century: via French from Latin disquisitio(n-) 'investigation', based on quaerere 'seek'. The original sense was 'topic for investigation', whence 'discourse in which a subject is investigated' (mid 17th century).