Tangentialist

Someone who agrees to do something specific but becomes distracted and goes off in all directions, like Captain Wrongway Peachfuzz

He agreed to take out the trash but then he, being a tangentialist, went through the trash instead, focusing intently on each item, having decided that YOU don't know what constitutes trash, and that he needs to decide.

He micromanages by being a tangentialist, spiraling Brainiac style into the project - trouble is, he misses the target. By a country mile.

by The debil October 31, 2013

tangentialist

(n) person; someone who engages in tangental speech, a communication disorder in which the train of thought of the speaker wanders and shows a lack of focus, never returning to the initial topic of the conversation. Symptoms include unnecessary detail and storytelling that only slightly relates to the original topic or never reaches a conclusion.

The tangentialist Playful_Barber_8131 heard the word "peanut" in conversation, then proceeded to describe how the word origin is derived from the fact that peanuts are legumes and thus related to peas, hence "pea" + "nut" to get the word "peanut," and then went on to describe another fun fact about how American cheese doesn't have enough cheese in it to qualify as real cheese, so it's actually called a "processed cheese food," and that even though they like American cheese they like cheddar cheese a lot more, especially sharp English cheddar, as Cheddar is the epynmous place after which the cheese is named, and it's so interesting how a lot of foods are named after places and the food becomes more famous than the place, like champagne, and so on and so forth, never again returning to the original topic of conversation, which was "do you have any allergies?"

by InstantD March 21, 2025

tangentialize

(verb)

1. To go off on a tangent mid-conversation.

2. To pirate a conversation away from its natural course.

Let's stop tangentializing so we can figure out what we're doing tonight.

When I'm talking with her, Kristen tangentializes so often that I can't ever remember what we were originally talking about.

by Pabloney April 25, 2011

Tangentialism

noun; a point or points made during a discussion that are off-topic or only loosely related to the actual subject of discussion, or the tendency to makes such points ;

noun or adjective; Tangentialist, as a noun describes a person or group of people who frequently make tangentialist remarks

While they were discussing the Trolley Car problem, Rupert made the tangentialist remark that modern trolley cars have safety systems which make it impossible for them to crash into people. He's quite the tangentialist. Unfortunately, the group's discussions were derailed by frequent tangentialism.

by ARog59 August 23, 2024