verbalisticadj.

1879 J. Veitch in tr. R. Descartes Method (ed. 6) Introd. x. p. cviii Spinoza's was a retrograde movement into the antiquated verbalistic thought.

1953 H. H. Price Thinking & Experience viii. 237 It is no sillier than the purely Verbalistic theory which is at present fashionable.

1975 Amer. Speech 1969 44 128 We live in a highly verbalistic culture.

2009 Race/Ethnicity 2 167 Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, the methods for evaluating knowledge..: everything in the ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.

1934 A. Sidgwick in Mind 43 411 To do full justice to a speaker's intended meaning instead of verbalistically insisting that he ‘must’ mean exactly what he says.

1940 Theology 40 426 Pose the question thus verbalistically, and at once one suggests the method of lexicographical analysis.

2006 E. B. Borowitz Talmud's Theol. Lang.-Games ix. 165 The commitment to intertextuality in literary studies would engender a hermetic, verbalistically regimented manner of reading.