Words / D / Medicine

digress

verb/daɪˈgrɛs/

B2CEFR level
35/100Rarity: fairly common
TechnicalRegister

To move away temporarily from the main topic being discussed.

The patient kept digressing into unrelated family matters, so the doctor gently redirected him.

Similar: stray, deviate

Topic: Clinical consultation in Medical English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More medicine words: Clinical consultation