circumstantiality
n. circuitous, indirect speech in which the individual digresses to give unnecessary and often irrelevant details before arriving at the main point. An extreme form, arising from disorganized associative processes, may occur in schizophrenia, obsessional disorders, and certain types of dementia. Circumstantiality differs from tangentiality in that the main point is never lost but rather accompanied by a large amount of nonessential information.