wordy
Americanadjective
-
characterized by or given to the use of many, or too many, words; verbose.
She grew impatient at his wordy reply.
- Synonyms:
- voluble, loquacious, talkative, diffuse
-
pertaining to or consisting of words; verbal.
adjective
-
using, inclined to use, or containing an excess of words
a wordy writer
a wordy document
-
of the nature of or relating to words; verbal
Synonym Usage
Wordy, prolix, redundant, pleonastic all mean using more words than necessary to convey a desired meaning. Wordy, the broadest and least specific of these terms, may, in addition to indicating an excess of words, suggest a garrulousness or loquaciousness: a wordy, gossipy account of a simple incident. Prolix refers to speech or writing extended to great and tedious length with inconsequential details: a prolix style that tells you more than you need or want to know. Redundant and pleonastic both refer to unnecessary repetition of language. Redundant has also a generalized sense of “excessive” or “no longer needed”: the dismissal of redundant employees. In describing language, it most often refers to overelaboration through the use of expressions that repeat the sense of other expressions in a passage: a redundant text crammed with amplifications of the obvious. Pleonastic, usually a technical term, refers most often to expressions that repeat something that has been said before: “A true fact” and “a free gift” are pleonastic expressions.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of wordy
First recorded before 1100; Middle English; Old English wordig. See word, -y 1
Vocabulary lists containing wordy
Language and Grammar - High School
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Language and Grammar - Middle School
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -y
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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.
See Examples For:
Its wordy libretto, faithfully adapted by Philip Littell from the Tennessee Williams play, is a bit too long.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
"They're quite wordy so you could argue that a lot of subjective marking could happen," Polley said.
From BBC ● Apr. 7, 2026
Users — especially those who made the switch to Claude — have recently slammed the app for being unnecessarily wordy and preachy in tone.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 25, 2026
In frank yet wordy songs that layer guitars and synths over shimmering grooves, Duff sings about trying to overcome old habits and about her fear that her best times are behind her.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 20, 2026
The music from the settlement stays the same, messy and wordy and bending around itself like a monkey.
From "The Knife of Never Letting Go" by Patrick Ness
Whichever unnamed firm approached Arcadia, it took a particular interest in the wordier History Press, indicating that generative text remains the lodestar.
From Slate ● Nov. 3, 2025
“Midnights,” from 2022, was a little moodier than 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” which was a little wordier than its predecessor, but both operated within a relatively narrow template.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2025
We found that 64 percent of our respondents preferred to funnel resources toward the case that featured a wordier report.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 30, 2022
It isn’t often that a serial playgoer, worn down by other, wordier dramatists, watches the lights come up and hopes they go back down.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 30, 2022
I knew a Captain of artillery in Smith's division, who was wordier than Gratiano, and who exaggerated like Falstaff.
From Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War by Townsend, George Alfred
This is one of the wordiest musicals in the history of theater, a show so drunk on the exuberance of its language that it almost never stops to catch its breath.
From New York Times ● Oct. 7, 2022
Lines have been plucked from the novel, yet even at its wordiest, the film is never weighed down by the burden of faithfulness.
From New York Times ● Oct. 15, 2020
The statistics also support another observation court watchers have made -- Breyer is by far the wordiest justice.
From Chicago Tribune ● Mar. 30, 2012
The Internal Revenue Code isn’t the wordiest part of the United States Code by a long shot, according to the analysis by Bommarito and Katz.
From Slate ● Oct. 26, 2011
Think of "The Excursion," of Southey, and of the early poems of Shelley, of Scott at his wordiest.
From Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism by Canby, Henry Seidel
Definitions 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.
