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Friday August 6, 1999

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verbiage \VUR-bee-ij\ , noun:
1. An overabundance of words; wordiness.
2. Manner or style of expression; diction.

The sheer volume of verbiage he has expelled over eight years is enough to make John Updike look blocked.
-- Andrew Sullivan, "Sounds of Silence", New Republic, January 15, 2001

Points like these seem so self-evident as not to merit much repeating, but in the professional literature they appear all the time, slightly dressed up in academic verbiage.
-- Michael Barrett, "The Case for More School Days", The Atlantic, November 1990

She also indulged in flowery verbiage that her classmates called "H.D." for "heightened diction."
-- John Habich, "Mother Country", Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 25, 2001

Verbiage comes from French, ultimately from Latin verbum, "word."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for verbiage

 

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