N. deviation, swerving, obliquation|, warp, refraction, flection, flexion, sweep, deflection, deflexure, declination, diversion, digression, depart from, aberration, divergence, zigzag, detour, divagation, wandering, vagrancy, evagation, bypaths and crooked ways, byroad, sidling, knight's move at chess

V. alter one's course, deviate, depart from, turn, trend, bend, curve, swerve, heel, bear off, gybe, wear, intervert, deflect, divert, divert from its course, put on a new scent, shift, shunt, draw aside, crook, warp, stray, straggle, sidle, diverge, tralineate|, digress, wander, wind, twist, meander, veer, tack, divagate, sidetrack, turn aside, turn a corner, turn away from, wheel, steer clear of, ramble, rove, drift, go astray, go adrift, yaw, dodge, step aside, ease off, make way for, shy, fly off at a tangent, glance off, wheel about, face about, turn to the right about, face to the right about, waddle, go out of one's way, lose one's way

Adj. deviating, aberrant, errant, excursive, discursive, devious, desultory, loose, rambling, stray, erratic, vagrant, undirected, circuitous, indirect, zigzag, crab-like

Adv. astray from, round about, wide of the mark, to the right about, all manner of ways, circuitously, obliquely, sideling, like the move of the knight on a chessboard

N. diffuseness, amplification, dilating, verbosity, verbiage, cloud of words, copia verborum, flow of words, looseness, polylogy, tautology, battology, perissology|, pleonasm, exuberance, redundancy, thrice-told tale, prolixity, circumlocution, ambages, periphrase, periphrasis, roundabout phrases, episode, expletive, pennya-lining, richness

V. be diffuse, run out on, descant, expatiate, enlarge, dilate, amplify, expand, inflate, launch out, branch out, rant, maunder, prose, harp upon, dwell on, insist upon, digress, ramble, battre la campagne, beat about the bush, perorate, spin a long yarn, protract, spin out, swell out, draw out, battologize

Adj. diffuse, profuse, wordy, verbose, largiloquent|, copious, exuberant, pleonastic, lengthy, longsome, long-winded, longspun, long drawn out, spun out, protracted, prolix, prosing, maundering, circumlocutory, periphrastic, ambagious, roundabout, digressive, discursive, excursive, loose, rambling episodic, flatulent, frothy

Adv. diffusely, at large, in extenso, about it and about it