Verbosity

Verbosity is a term indicating speech or writing which is deemed to use an excess of words. Synonyms for verbosity include wordiness, prolixity, grandiloquence, garrulousness, expatiation, and logorrhea. Corresponding adjectival forms are verbose, wordy, prolix, grandiloquent, garrulous, and logorrheic. Examples of verbosity are common in political speech, academic prose, and other genres.

Quotes

Sorted alphabetically by author or source

• [...] the Eternal turned his attention to the three shades who stood humbly and yet hopefully before him. The quick, with so short a time to live, when they talk of themselves, talk too much; but the dead, with eternity before them, are so verbose that only angels could listen to them with civility.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, Collected short stories 1, "The judgement seat", p. 314

• Naturally it takes a good deal of Pencil to say a long thing like that.
  • A. A. Milne, in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926).

• He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
  • William Shakespeare, in Love's Labours Lost Scene I.

See also

• Brevity