[a. F. verbiage (17th c.), irreg. f. L. verb-um word: see -AGE. So Pg. verbiagem.]
1. Wording of a superabundant or superfluous character; abundance of words without necessity or without much meaning; excessive wordiness.
a. 1721. Prior, Dial. Locke & Montaigne, 275. Without … being guided by any sort of Verbiage like this.
1738. Warburton, Div. Legat., I. 69. The Matter, when … cleared from the Perplexity of his abounding Verbiage, lies open to this easy Answer.
1787. Charlotte Smith, Rom. Real Life, I. 167. The repetitions and verbiage of the pleadings [have been] reduced.
1858. Sears, Athan., I. iii. 20. In vain you take refuge in abstractions and verbiage.
1880. L. Stephen, Pope, iii. 73. The Homeric phrase is thus often muffled and deadened by Pope’s verbiage.
2. Diction, wording, verbal expression.
1804. Wellington, in Gurw., Desp. (1835), III. 193. All that is nothing; the previous verbiage [of the treaty] is thought sufficient to bind us.
1814. New Brit. Theatre, III. 286. The language of the dialogue is as familiar as the verbiage of the parlour fireside.
1882. Farrar, Early Chr., I. 186. Independently of this distinctiveness of verbiage there is a wide difference between the two Epistles in the general form of thought.
Hence [or f. F. verbiager vb.] Verbiagerie.
1817. Blackw. Mag., I. 469. Her obscurity,—her high-sounding phrases,-… and all the imposing apparatus of verbiagerie, are not unsparingly employed.
