prolixity

Rarely pro·lix·ness

[proh-lik-si-tee]

noun

1. the state or quality of being unnecessarily or tediously wordy; verbosity.

   The book offers food for thought but, for all its prolixity, fails to effectively explain what is at the core of irony as a rhetorical strategy.

2. a tendency to speak or write at great or tedious length.

   As a communicator, the official suffers from a lethal mix of ailments: terminal prolixity, rampant hyperbole, and a preference for bureaucratic jargon.

Other Word Forms

• overprolixity noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of prolixity¹

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Middle French prolixité “lengthiness, verbosity,” from Late Latin prōlixitāt- (inflectional stem prōlixitās ) “tedious length in speech or writing,” from Latin: “extension in time or space”; prolix ( def. )

Example Sentences

As Chief Justice John Marshall said in 1819, the nature of a constitution was that it was designed for the ages and therefore could not “partake of the prolixity of a legal code.”

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Smith’s rendering of “The White Book” cannot be accused of prolixity.

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As with Anthony Burgess and John Updike, Roth’s astonishing prolixity exhausted even his most loyal readers.

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A wordsmith who leaves no one speechless and no zippy phrase unturned, he’s got a gift for gab that goes beyond logorrhea and prolixity into rat-a-tat felicity.

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Facebook can be really annoying in that it seems to be based on a 10-year-old’s idea of friendship, and because it is filled with pointless prolixity and banality from boring people.

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