circumstantiality /-stan′shē·al″itē/ [L, circum + stare, to stand] , (in psychiatry) a speech pattern in which a patient has difficulty in separating relevant from irrelevant information while describing an event. The patient often includes all details and presents them in a sequential order, with the result that the main thread of thought becomes lost as one association leads to another. Frequently the person may need to have questions repeated because the main point of answers has become lost in the confusion of unnecessary detail. Compare flight of ideas.
