lengthy
[lengk-thee, leng-, len-]
- having or being of great length; very long: a lengthy journey.
- tediously verbose; very long; too long: a lengthy speech.
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Origin of lengthy
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for lengthily
Historical Examples
Never before in his life had Mark spoken so eloquently nor so lengthily.
Janet of the DunesHarriet T. Comstock
I only know that after talking so lengthily he fell into a nine days' silence.
The VirginianOwen Wister
Modesty may suffer from a lengthily savoured kiss between two Pietists of eighteen.
A Conservative speech is as accurately (though perhaps not as lengthily) reported in a Liberal paper as in one of its own colour.
The Land of ContrastsJames Fullarton Muirhead
Mr. Horbury looked quietly and lengthily at the boy, who stood white and sick before him.
The Secret GloryArthur Machen
lengthy
- of relatively great or tiresome extent or duration
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for lengthily
lengthy
adj.
1759, American English, from length + -y (2). Until c.1840 always characterized in British English as an Americanism.
This word has been very common among us, both in writing and in the language of conversation; but it has been so much ridiculed by Americans as well as Englishmen, that in writing it is now generally avoided. Mr. Webster has admitted it into his dictionary; but as need hardly be remarked it is not in any of the English ones. It is applied by us, as Mr. Webster justly observes, chiefly to writings or discourses. Thus we say, a lengthy pamphlet, a lengthy sermon, &c. The English would say, a long or (in the more familiar style) a longish sermon. [John Pickering, "A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America," Boston, 1816]
Related: Lengthily; lengthiness.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper