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But I Digress
The verb digress is often encountered in the phrase “but I digress.” This is an idiomatic expression that has been in use in English for many hundreds of years. Examples may be found as far back as 1653, when Edmund Hall used “but I digress” in his A Scriptural Discourse of the Apostasie and the Antichrist. The phrase is used, often jocularly, by speakers and writers to indicate that they have veered away from the subject that they had been speaking or writing of, and intend to return to it.
Examples of digress in a Sentence
Gary Greenberg, Harper's, May 2007
Coleridge, of course, who happily called himself a … lover of parentheses, does not bridle himself, but merely produces digressions about how he should not digress.
—James Wood, New Republic, 6 Sept. 1999
He had not written too much per se; he had digressed intolerably given the significance of the events under consideration.
—Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, 1997
He digressed so often that it was hard to follow what he was saying.
If I can digress for a moment, I'd like to briefly mention her earlier films.
Selome Hailu, Variety, 5 Mar. 2024
Trump trial 'not a political rally': judge Trump’s two civil cases featured judges chiding the former president for speaking out of turn or digressing in his responses, while Trump bridles against restrictions.
—Bart Jansen, USA TODAY, 30 Jan. 2024
The Suns nearly had to play perfect on both ends to win – and did so – but their defense digressed some more.
—Duane Rankin, The Arizona Republic, 17 Jan. 2024
The audience of 1,600-plus, all primed to cheer the speakers’ adversarial views, found less and less to react to as the panel digressed.
—Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times, 14 Sep. 2023
Ellis kept digressing into jokes and rambling stories during his set, even doing a bit of brief crowd work with the audience.
—Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rolling Stone, 19 Mar. 2023
The fascinating conversation between Dr. Patalon, the philosophy enthusiast physician and the rather nontraditional economist digressed in unexpected directions but concluded with an interesting note.
—Carrie Rubinstein, Forbes, 8 Mar. 2023
It’s now useful to digress briefly into what money is.
—John Tamny, Forbes, 17 Apr. 2022
The pair often digress into Chicago-high-school-basketball minutiae, memories of seeing palm trees for the first time.
—Hua Hsu, The New Yorker, 29 Mar. 2021
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'digress.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near digress
Cite this Entry
“Digress.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/digress. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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digress
verb
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