verbose
adjective
Did you know?
There's no shortage of words to describe wordiness in English. Diffuse, long-winded, prolix, redundant, windy, repetitive, rambling, and circumlocutory are some that come to mind. Want to express the opposite idea? Try succinct, concise, brief, short, summary, terse, compact, or compendious. Verbose, which falls solidly into the first camp of words, comes from the Latin adjective verbōsus, from verbum, meaning "word." Other descendants of verbum include verb, adverb, proverb, verbal, and verbicide ("the deliberate distortion of the sense of a word").
Examples of verbose in a Sentence
Paul Cartledge, Times Literary Supplement, 8 Mar. 1991
What makes this tiny tome so much fun are the answers. There are occasional one-word zingers: to a verbose question as to whether a resident of a planet with two suns would have two shadows, Merlin's response is "Yes." The longest answers are about a page in length and seem to be triggered when a questioner happens upon one of the author's favorite topics or pet peeves, such as relativity, tachyons, and the endangered ozone layer.
—James H. Sharp, Air & Space Smithsonian, February/March 1990
I must confess … that if I had known how many classics there are in English literature, and how verbose the best of them contrive to be, I should never have undertaken the work. They only allow one seventy thousand words, you see.
—Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, 1915
He is a verbose speaker.
She has a verbose writing style.
Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Jan. 2023
The verbose coach was at somewhat of a loss for words, opting to forgo opening remarks in his postgame press conference and instead diving right into questions.
—Tom Green | Tgreen@al.com, al, 18 Jan. 2023
So, Soul gravitated to the most verbose, formalist, showily technical music available to him.
—Paul Thompson, Rolling Stone, 12 Dec. 2022
Their conversations — facetious, verbose, skittish — propel the narrative, reveal their personalities and betray their intentions.
—Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 Oct. 2022
See All Example Sentences for verbose
Cite this Entry
“Verbose.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verbose. Accessed 26 Jul. 2025.
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verbose
adjective
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