Word of the Day

: April 30, 2013

verbose

adjective ver-BOHSS

What It Means

1 : containing more words than necessary : wordy; also : impaired by wordiness

2 : given to wordiness

verbose in Context

The writing style in government publications is often both dry and verbose-a deadly combination.

"The 50,000-word goal, for example, can make even the most succinct writers verbose. Why be satisfied with a prissy dog when you can have a tiny white prissy dog with a pink ribbon around her neck and add an additional nine words to your novel?" - From an article by Dana Sachs in Publisher's Weekly, November 30, 2012

Did You Know?

There's no shortage of words to describe wordiness in English. "Diffuse," "long-winded," "prolix," "redundant," "windy," "repetitive," "loose," "rambling," "digressive," and "circumlocutory" are some that come to mind. Want to express the opposite idea? Try "succinct," "concise," "brief," "short," "summary," "terse," "precise," "compact," "lean," "tight," or "compendious." "Verbose," which falls solidly into the first camp of words, comes from Latin "verbosus," from "verbum," meaning "word." Other descendants of "verbum" include "verb," "adverb," "proverb," "verbal," and "verbicide" (that's the deliberate distortion of the sense of a word).