verbiage
Americannoun
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overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness; verbosity.
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manner or style of expressing something in words; wording.
a manual of official verbiage.
noun
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the excessive and often meaningless use of words; verbosity
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rare diction; wording
Etymology
Origin of verbiage
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; see verb, warble 1 ( def. )) + -age -age
Explanation
Verbiage is what it sounds like — a lot of words: verbs, nouns, adjectives and all the other parts of speech. Usually, verbiage means a few too many words — like the excessive verbiage in a legal document. Verbiage comes from the 18th-century French verbier, meaning "to chatter." Verbiage can mean just the words being used to communicate, or a bunch of empty words used to obscure communication. Someone long-winded might receive a sarcastic "compliment" about his verbiage, while another speaker might receive genuine applause for intelligent verbiage, or choice of words.
Vocabulary lists containing verbiage
Fahrenheit 451
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "V"
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Unit 2: Pivotal Words and Phrases
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They use mashed-together databases to sense patterns and retrieve verbiage.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
For all her verbiage, she can find no easy fix, nor even a complicated one.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026
There was no verbiage about how the world’s most powerful hardware company would “introduce our audience to the next generation of agentic sports-watching, bringing fans closer to the action than ever before.”
From Slate ● Jun. 10, 2026
In a devastating scene, she lets him down about potentially starting a spa with him, using the same verbiage that Tanya used with her in Season 1.
From Salon ● Apr. 7, 2025
That tedious paragraph was filled with metadiscourse—verbiage about verbiage, such as subsection, review, and discussion.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
