verbiage
/ˈvəːbɪɪdʒ
/noun [mass noun]
1Excessively lengthy or technical speech or writing: the basic idea here, despite all the verbiage, is simple there is plenty of irrelevant verbiage...
- Corruption and tyranny both hide in irrelevant public verbiage.
- Dwarfed by the scope of the bill's radical changes, this bit of verbiage flew under the public's radar screen.
- Smiley says her first letters to the Times were edited heavily, with excess verbiage getting the knife.
Synonyms
verbosity, verboseness, padding, wordiness, prolixity, prolixness, superfluity, redundancy, long-windedness, lengthiness, protractedness, discursiveness, expansiveness, digressiveness, convolution, circumlocution, circuitousness, rambling, wandering, meandering
British informal waffle, waffling, wittering, flannel
rare logorrhoea
2US The way in which something is expressed; wording or diction: we need to look at how the rule should be applied, based on the verbiage...
- A modern cinematic chronicle of baseball's integration has to be bolder about using authentic verbiage.
- The verbiage on the site is also key to the design.
- In that same tradition Walsh provides them with some witty, juicy verbiage.
Usage
The form verbage, formed without the i on the pattern of words such as garbage, is sometimes used, but this is generally regarded as a mistake. Around five per cent of citations in the Oxford English Corpus are for this incorrect spelling.
Origin
Early 18th century: from French, from obsolete verbeier 'to chatter', from verbe 'word' (see verb).