Verbosity

Excessive use of words Verbosity, or verboseness, is speech or writing that uses more words than necessary. The opposite of verbosity is brevity. Some teachers, including the author of The Elements of Style, warn against verbosity. Similarly Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, among others, famously avoided it. Synonyms of "verbosity" include wordiness, verbiage, loquacity, garrulousness, logorrhea, prolixity, grandiloquence, expatiation, sesquipedalianism, and overwriting. Etymology and synonyms The word verbosity comes from Latin verbosus, "wordy". There are many other English words that also refer to the use of excessive words. Prolixity comes from Latin prolixus, "extended". Prolixity can also be used to refer to the length of a monologue or speech, especially a formal address such as a lawyer's oral argument. Grandiloquence is complex speech or writing judged to be pompous or bombastic diction. It is a combination of the Latin words grandis ("great") and loqui ("to speak"). Logorrhea or logorrhoea (from Greek λογόρροια, logorrhoia, "word-flux") is an excessive flow of words. It is often used pejoratively to describe prose that is hard to understand because it is needless