verbiage

[ vur-bee-ij ]

noun

1. overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness; verbosity.
2. manner or style of expressing something in words; wording:

   a manual of official verbiage.

verbiage

/ ˈvɜːbɪɪdʒ /

noun

1. the excessive and often meaningless use of words; verbosity
2. rare.
   diction; wording

Word History and Origins

Origin of verbiage¹

First recorded in 1715–25; from French, from Middle French verbi(er) “to gabble” (also guerbloier, verboier, werbler, with a change in spelling by association with verbe “word,” from Germanic; verb, warble ¹( def ) ) + -age -age

Word History and Origins

Origin of verbiage¹

C18: from French, from Old French verbier to chatter, from verbe word, from Latin verbum

Example Sentences

See how others who are passionate about a topic are talking about it and see how you can incorporate that verbiage into your posts.

From Search Engine Land

In this verbiage, this denotes anything shy of a commercial vehicle.

From Outside Online

He had played quarterback at Stanford and knew the verbiage of the West Coast offense.

From Washington Post

Going through the verbiage you will find that they place authority on the authors of content being mentioned in news articles and publications.

From Search Engine Watch

That has explanations back to the verbiage in the United States in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s actually.

From Freakonomics

While the answer contained additional verbiage, it maintains the same low level of intellectual content.

From The Daily Beast

Political correctness was not part of her vocabulary, but anti-Semitic verbiage was.

From The Daily Beast

But the flood of Joan Rivers-style verbiage about her day-to-day wardrobe has overwhelmed those nuanced conversations.

From The Daily Beast

With a Romney-tilting audience, the nervous verbiage sounded even worse than it was.

From The Daily Beast

Such verbiage and dithering in the face of market mayhem helped Europe get into its mess in the first place.

From The Daily Beast

Jimmy was commissioned to anglicize a proper proposal and André spent hours in repeating the verbiage as taught.

From Project Gutenberg

What a collection of hopeless babblers, what a lot of superfluous verbiage, what an amount of wasted breath!'

From Project Gutenberg

The chapters are well condensed, nowhere burdened with verbiage, yet sufficiently full to serve the purpose in view.

From Project Gutenberg

I do not see how there can be a doubt; and yet, as I have said, it seems to me that a great deal of it is unnecessary verbiage.

From Project Gutenberg

"The intention is a commendable one, though expressed with unnecessary verbiage," replied Ning.

From Project Gutenberg