verbiage

noun

ver·biage ˈvər-bē-ij

also

-bij

: a profusion of words usually of little or obscure content

such a tangled maze of evasive verbiage as a typical party platform

Marcia Davenport

: manner of expressing oneself in words : diction

sportswriters guarded their verbiage so jealously

R. A. Sokolov

Did you know?

Verbiage descends from French verbier, meaning "to trill" or "to warble." The usual sense of the word implies an overabundance of possibly unnecessary words, much like the word wordiness. In other words, a writer with a fondness for verbiage might be accused of "wordiness." Some people think the phrase "excess verbiage" is redundant, but that's not necessarily true. Verbiage has a second sense meaning, simply, "wording," with no suggestion of excess. This second definition has sometimes been treated as an error by people who insist that verbiage must always imply excessiveness, but that sense is well-established and can be considered standard.

Example Sentences

NOT the least of the many trials inflicted upon the Boston Red Sox has been a torrent of verbiage. Surely no team in recent memory has been so scrutinized, complained about and then elegized.

Charles McGrath, New York Times Book Review, 13 Aug. 2006 Fashionable courtiers in the Renaissance adopted the doublet. … The cotton padding of this jacket, called bombast (the source of the term for inflated verbiage), was gradually increased to give courtiers the pumped-up look.

John Tierney, New York Times, 21 Jan. 1999 To find the height of arcane verbiage look no farther than Rule 10 of the rules governing Major League Baseball, in what is known as the Blue Book. The corresponding entry explains the waivers system—the procedures that pertain to certain player transactions—in a way that makes the Magna Carta look like part of the Jackie Collins oeuvre.

Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated, 25 Aug. 1997 Sure, some contract verbiage is so objectionable, it can be considered against public policy; in fact, the most arduous hold-harmless clauses would probably be thrown out of court.

Leon H. Ciesla, Plane & Pilot, March 1995 Is word processing truly the wonder it seems or will it turn out to be but a mere exercise in verbose verbiage?

Erik Sandberg-Diment, New York Times, 26 June 1984 The editor removed some of the excess verbiage from the article. teachers loathe the verbiage that students resort to in order to pad a paper See More

Recent Examples on the Web Even though Mitchell arrived in September from Utah, almost everything is different -- his role, his usage, the system, teammates, coaching staff, verbiage and play calls.

Chris Fedor, cleveland, 20 Oct. 2022 Stories persuade and move the world, by the way, not PowerPoint presentations or owner's manuals or salesperson verbiage.

John Evans, Forbes, 10 Oct. 2022 The verbiage in the post is very similar to the text in that article and, at times, identical.

Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY, 29 July 2022 The temptation to keep issuing verbiage is too great, the discipline of economy too taxing, for most writers to bear.

Barton Swaim, WSJ, 19 Sep. 2022 Some of these vignettes function like relatively conventional short stories, while others are single-page explosions of decontextualized verbiage.

Aaron Timms, The New Republic, 2 Sep. 2022 Perhaps the fieriest critic of the streaming services is David Israelite, president and CEO of the NMPA, whose aggressive tactics and verbiage were on full display at the trade organization’s annual meeting in June.

Jem Aswad, Variety, 28 July 2022 The trustees relooked at the policy late last month and voted to keep the verbiage the same.

Samantha Chery, Washington Post, 23 June 2022 Title IX is a law, yes, but there are women’s personal stories intertwined with the verbiage whose lives depended on it.

Jordan Ligons, Essence, 21 June 2022 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'verbiage.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from French, from verbier "to trill, warble" (going back to Middle French verboier "to twitter," altered from Middle French dialect (Picard) verbloier, guerbloier, derivative of werbler "to sing expressively, trill") + -age -age — more at warble entry 1

Note: The meaning of French verbiage clearly shows the associative influence of verbe "word, verb" and its derivatives.

First Known Use

circa 1721, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler

The first known use of verbiage was circa 1721

See more words from the same year