Dram

WORD OF THE DAY

dram / noun / DRAM

Definition
1a: a unit of avoirdupois weight equal to 1/16 ounce
1b: a unit of apothecaries' weight equal to 1/8 ounce
1c: a unit of liquid capacity equal to 1/8 fluid ounce
2a: a small portion of something to drink
2b: a small amount

Examples
The two of them don't have a dram of sense between them, so I'm not surprised that they got into so much trouble.

"Do you know what I just found out? Monkey Shoulder blended Scotch? Totally not made from monkey shoulders. As far as I'm informed, there are no monkey parts whatsoever in this delicious dram."
— Mat Dinsmore, The Coloradoan, 22 Jan. 2014

Did You Know?
In avoirdupois weight—that is, the system of weights commonly used in North America and the United Kingdom—a dram is equal to 1/16 ounce (1.772 grams).
The word dram was borrowed from the Anglo-French and Late Latin word dragme, which was originally used for a silver coin used by the ancient Greeks (now known in English as the drachma) as well as for the coin's approximate weight.
In the 16th century, English speakers began also using dram for a weight of fluid measure (also called a fluid dram) equal to 1/8 fluid ounce, and more loosely for any small portion of something to drink. Dram is also used figuratively for any small amount, in much the same way as grain and ounce.

Ritzy

WORD OF THE DAY

ritzy / adjective / RIT-see

Definition
1a: being, characteristic of, or befitting a snob
1b: snobbish
2a; impressively or ostentatiously fancy or stylish
2b: fashionable, posh

Examples
"Pop star Justin Timberlake … hosted a listening party for his new album at a ritzy Manhattan loft where catering was provided by René Redzepi's impossible-to-get-into Copenhagen restaurant…."
— Greg Morabito, Eater.com, 17 Jan. 2018

"Allen owned one of the most desirable properties in California, a 120-acre parcel on a hilltop in ritzy Beverly Crest that is on the market for $150 million."
— Scott Kraft, The Los Angeles Times, 15 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?
César Ritz (1850-1918) earned worldwide renown for the luxurious hotels bearing his name in London and Paris. (The Ritz-Carlton hotel company is a contemporary descendant of these enterprises.) Although they were by no means the first to cater to high-end clients, Ritz's hotels quickly earned reputations as symbols of opulence.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, a writer who often focused on the fashionably wealthy, titled one of his short stories "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," and the phrase "to put on the ritz" means "to indulge in ostentatious display."
The adjective ritzy, describing either something fancy or stylish, or the haughty attitudes of the wealthy elite, first checked into the English language in 1920.

Betwixt

WORD OF THE DAY

betwixt / adverb or preposition / bih-TWIKST 

Definition
: between

Examples
"O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times / seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and / an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself." 
— William Shakespeare, Othello, 1622

"Barry is a bit betwixt and between as a viewing experience: too violent for people who don't like violence, not energetic or dramatic enough for people who do." 
— Willa Paskin, Slate Magazine, 23 Mar. 2018

Did You Know?
"Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean; and so betwixt the two of them, they licked the platter clean." Perhaps you've always said "and so between the two of them" when reciting the tale of Jack Sprat and his wife. That's fine. 
Betwixt and between have similar origins: they both come from a combination of be- and related Old English roots. 
Both words appeared before the 12th century, but use of betwixt dropped off considerably toward the end of the 1600s. 
It survived in the phrase "betwixt and between" ("neither one thing nor the other"), which took on a life of its own in the 18th century. 
Nowadays, betwixt is uncommon, but it isn't archaic; it's simply used more consciously than between.

Yahoo

WORD OF THE DAY

yahoo / noun / YAH-hoo

Definition
1: (capitalized Yahoo) a member of a race of brutes in Swift's Gulliver's Travels who have the form and all the vices of humans
2: a boorish, crass, or stupid person

Examples
The reputation the teenagers had for being a bunch of self-involved yahoos was belied by their courteous treatment of the stranded motorists.

"In a place like America, we seem to revel in these geographic judgments. And so Northerners stereotype Southerners as Confederate flag-waving, pickup driving, moonshine-drinking yahoos and Southerners depict Northerners as snooty, elitist, big city, latte-drinking, Volvo-driving liberals."
— John F. Hudson, The Cambridge (Massachusetts) Chronicle, 31 May 2018

Did You Know?
We know exactly how old yahoo is because its debut in print also marked its entrance into the English language as a whole. Yahoo began life as a made-up word invented by Jonathan Swift in his book Gulliver's Travels, which was published in 1726.
On his fourth and final voyage of the book, Lemuel Gulliver is marooned on an island that is the home of the Houyhnhnms, a species of intelligent, civilized horses who share their land with and rule over the Yahoos, a species of brutes with the form and vices of humans.
These Yahoos represented Swift's view of humankind at its lowest. It is not surprising, then, that yahoo came to be applied to any actual human who was particularly unpleasant or unintelligent.

Quirk

WORD OF THE DAY

quirk / verb / KWERK

Definition
: curve, twist

Examples
"If you quirked your eyebrow at The Shape of Water's merman, your jaw probably dropped clean off when you realized that some viewers were, well, thirsty for the marine man."
— Melissa Broder and Samantha Hunt, Elle, 14 Sept. 2018

"The video was of a laughing baby, and I felt the corners of my mouth quirking up. After, the computer asked me how I'd felt while watching. 'Happy,' I clicked."
— Elizabeth Svoboda, MIT Technology Review, 16 Aug. 2018

Did You Know?
Did you expect quirk to be a noun meaning "a peculiarity of action or behavior"? If so, you're probably not alone; the "peculiarity" sense of the noun quirk is commonly known and has been a part of our language since the 17th century.
But quirk has long worn other hats in English, too. The sense meaning "a curve, turn, or twist" has named everything from curving pen marks on paper (i.e., flourishes) to witty turns of phrase to the vagaries or twists of fate.
In contemporary English, the verb quirk can be used in referring to facial expressions, especially those that involve crooked smiles or furrowed eyebrows.

Impromptu

WORD OF THE DAY

impromptu /adjective  / im-PROMP-too 

Definition
1a: made, done, or formed on or as if on the spur of the moment
1b: improvised
2a: composed or uttered without previous preparation
2b: extemporaneous

Examples
When we got word of Caitlin's good news, we threw an impromptu party to celebrate.

"West capped off his curious musical guest gig, where he subbed for Ariana Grande, with a rambling rant after NBC's broadcast ended. The impromptu speech was captured by Chris Rock, who posted it to his Instagram Story."
— Kim Willis, USA Today, 30 Sept. 2018

Did You Know?
If you think that impromptu looks like a relative of the adjective prompt, you're right; both are ultimately derived from the Latin promere, meaning "to bring forth, take out."
Impromptu was borrowed from French, where it meant "extemporaneously," but French speakers picked it up from the Latin phrase in promptu, a promere descendant meaning "in readiness" or "at hand."
Something that is impromptu is generally "prompted" (that English verb is from Latin promptus, of the same meaning) by an occasion that generates a response in the form of, for example, a party or a speech that has not been planned.
There is also another, much rarer descendant of promere in English: the noun promptuary, meaning "a book of ready reference."

Cornucopia

WORD OF THE DAY

cornucopia / noun / kor-nuh-KOH-pee-uh

Definition

1: a curved, hollow goat's horn or similarly shaped receptacle (such as a horn-shaped basket) that is overflowing especially with fruit and vegetables (such as gourds, ears of corn, apples, and grapes) and that is used as a decorative motif emblematic of abundance

2a: an inexhaustible store 

2b: abundance

3: a receptacle shaped like a horn or cone

Examples

"While the auction will offer a cornucopia of decorative and fine art spanning many centuries and continents, its crown jewels are the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern paintings." 

— James Reginato, Vanity Fair, Holiday 2017

"With the veritable cornucopia of fitness gurus, fad diets, weight-loss programmes, and food boot-camps present today, it's not shocking that there is an information overload on nutrition everywhere." 

— Pooja Sachin Duggal, Business World, 14 Apr. 2018

Did You Know?

Cornucopia comes from Latin cornu copiae, which translates literally as "horn of plenty." 

A traditional staple of feasts, the cornucopia is believed to represent the horn of a goat from Greek mythology. According to legend, it was from this horn that the god Zeus was fed as an infant. Later, the horn was filled with flowers and fruits, and given as a present to Zeus. 

The filled horn (or a receptacle resembling it) has long served as a traditional symbol in art and decoration to suggest a store of abundance. 

The word first appeared in English in the early 16th century; a century later, it developed the figurative sense of an overflowing supply.

Noisome

WORD OF THE DAY

noisome / adjective / NOY-sum

Definition

1: noxious, harmful

2a: offensive to the senses and especially to the sense of smell

2b: highly obnoxious or objectionable

Examples

"The streets were narrow and very dirty, the air smoky and noisome, the people mostly wretched." 

— Ken Follett, The Man From St. Petersburg, 1982

"The last two newspaper offices where I worked were based in not-so-safe or particularly pretty areas of a city, and most nights when I left work I had to breathe in the noisomearomas of swamp gas, paper mill, deteriorating sewer lines and a dog food processing plant…." 

— Jackie Torok, The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, North Carolina), 27 May 2014

Did You Know?

Noisome sounds like it might be a synonym of noisy, but it's not. Something noisome is disgusting, offensive, or harmful, often in its smell. Noisome does not come from noise, but from the Middle English word noysome, which has the same meaning as noisome. 

Noysome was formed by combining the noun noy, which means "annoyance," with the adjectival suffix -some ("characterized by a (specified) thing, quality, state, or action"). 

Noy comes from Anglo-French anui, which also means "annoyance." As you may have already guessed, the English words annoy and annoyance are also related to noisome.

Perforce

WORD OF THE DAY

perforce / adverb / per-FORSS

Definition
: by force of circumstances

Examples
"All that frantic traveling was in lieu of any compelling reason to stay home, and those many, many friendships were perforce conducted at long distance."
— Blake Bailey, The New York Times Book Review, 28 Dec. 2012

"But by making an opera about television—a source of entertainment for the Everyman—they are, perforce, creating a marriage of high and low."
— Hilton Als, The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2018

Did You Know?
English speakers borrowed par force from Anglo-French in the 14th century. Par meant "by" (from Latin per) and the Anglo-French word force had the same meaning as its English equivalent, which was already in use by then.
At first, perforce meant quite literally "by physical coercion." That meaning is no longer used today, but it was still prevalent in William Shakespeare's lifetime (1564-1616):
"He rush'd into my house and took perforce my ring away," wrote the Bard in The Comedy of Errors.
The "by force of circumstances" sense of perforce had also come into use by Shakespeare's day.
In Henry IV, Part 2, we find "... your health; the which, if you give o'er to stormy passion, must perforce decay."

Henchman

WORD OF THE DAY

henchman / noun / HENCH-mun

Definition
1a: a trusted follower
1b: right-hand man
2: a political follower whose support is chiefly for personal advantage
3: a member of a gang

Examples
"The story follows the lives to two very different characters—Frank Guidry, a henchman for one of New Orleans' most powerful and vicious gangsters, and Charlotte, a woman struggling to raise her two daughters while dealing with a feckless, drunken husband."
— James D. Watts Jr., The Tulsa (Oklahoma) World, 11 Oct. 2018

"Since Mr. Mugabe's ouster, Mr. Mnangagwa has tried to remake Zimbabwe's image by portraying the government as business-friendly. He has appeared often at investors' conferences, wearing warm, colorful scarves to offset his fearsome reputation as Mr. Mugabe's former henchman."
— Norimitsu Onishi, The New York Times, 30 July 2018

Did You Know?
The earliest known examples of today's word in written English show it being used as a term for a squire or a page, but the word may have seen earlier use with the meaning "groom."
It first appeared in Middle English in the 14th century and is a combination of Old English hengest ("a male horse") and man. In the mid-1700s, henchman began to be used for the personal attendant of a Scottish Highland chief.
This sense, made familiar to many English readers by Sir Walter Scott, led to the word's use in the broader sense of "right-hand man," which in turn evolved into the other meanings.

Exculpate

WORD OF THE DAY

exculpate / verb / EK-skull-payt

Definition
: to clear from alleged fault or guilt

Examples
A false lead from an ancestry site is no different than eliminating suspects through regular detective work; except people are more easily exculpated."
— Julie O'Connor, The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey), 13 May 2018

"But the longer and more often you misremember something, the truer it becomes. Misremembering a bad thing as less bad might liberate a survivor, but it also might exculpate a perpetrator."
— Margaret Lyons, The New York Times, 26 May 2018

Did You Know?
You need not take the blame if you're unfamiliar with the origins of exculpate, and we would be glad to enlighten you, if that's the case.
The word, which was adopted in the 17th century from Medieval Latin exculpatus, traces back to the Latin noun culpa, meaning "blame." Some other descendants of culpa in English include culpable ("meriting condemnation or blame") and inculpate ("incriminate"), as well as the considerably rarer culpatory ("accusing") and disculpate (a synonym of exculpate).
You may also be familiar with the borrowed Latin phrase mea culpa, which translates directly as "through my fault" and is used in English to mean "a formal acknowledgment of personal fault or error."

Memento

WORD OF THE DAY

memento / noun / muh-MEN-toh

Definition

1: something that serves to warn or remind

2: souvenir

Examples

The box on the shelf in her closet is filled with mementos of Julie's basketball career—awards, newspaper clippings, team photographs, and her old uniform.

"Old photos and other mementos from his father's time in the military covered the small table." 

— Amaris Castillo, The Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun, 6 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?

Memento comes from the imperative form of meminisse, a Latin verb that literally means "to remember." (The term memento mori, meaning "a reminder of mortality," translates as "remember that you must die.") 

The history of memento makes it clear where its spelling came from, but because a memento often helps one remember a particular moment, people occasionally spell the term momento. 

This is usually considered a misspelling, but it appears often enough in edited prose to have been entered in most dictionaries as an acceptable variant spelling.

Tomfoolery

WORD OF THE DAY

tomfoolery / noun / tthm-FOO-luh-ree

Definition
: playful or foolish behavior

Examples
The antics in the play itself apparently inspired tomfoolery behind the scenes as well, as cast members reported a host of practical jokes including a few on opening night.

"Presented as an oral history in a series of conversations between the couple, the book features anecdotes, hijinks, photos, and a veritable grab bag of tomfoolery."
— Brandy McDonnell, NewsOK.com, 1 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?
In the Middle Ages, Thome Fole was a name assigned to those perceived to be of little intelligence. This eventually evolved into the spelling tomfool, which, when capitalized, also referred to a professional clown or a buffoon in a play or pageant.
The name Tom seems to have been chosen for its common-man quality, much like Joe Blow for an ordinary person or Johnny Reb for a soldier in the Confederate army, but tomfoolery need not apply strictly to actions by men.
In Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), for example, Marilla Cuthbert complains of Anne: "She's gadding off somewhere with Diana, writing stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never thinking once about the time or her duties."

Recalcitrant

WORD OF THE DAY

recalcitrant / adjective / rih-KAL-suh-trunt

Definition
1: obstinately defiant of authority or restraint
2a: difficult to manage or operate
2b: not responsive to treatment
2c: resistant

Examples
The magazine, aimed at parents and caregivers of young children, will include the latest in child development science as well as practical information, like tricks for persuading even the most recalcitrant toddler to cooperate.

"But the reforms are stalled, held back by recalcitrant bureaucrats loathe to give up their authority and perks…."
— William M. LeoGrande, Newsweek, 11 May 2018

Did You Know?
Long before any human was dubbed "recalcitrant" in English (that first occurred in the 18th century), there were stubborn mules (and horses) kicking back their heels.
The ancient Romans noted as much (Pliny the Elder among them), and they had a word for it: recalcitrare, which literally means "to kick back." (Its root calc-, meaning "heel," is also the root of calcaneus, the large bone of the heel in humans.)
Certainly Roman citizens in Pliny's time were sometimes willful and hardheaded—as attested by various Latin words meaning "stubborn"—but it wasn't until later that writers of Late Latin applied recalcitrare and its derivative adjective to humans who were stubborn as mules.

Admonish

WORD OF THE DAY

admonish / verb / ad-MAH-nish

Definition

1a: to indicate duties or obligations to 

1b: to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner

2: to give friendly earnest advice or encouragement to

3: to say (something) as advice or a warning

Examples

The teacher admonished the students to not speak over one another.

"Ringo Starr rocked, he rolled, he sang, he spoke, he admonished us all to embrace peace and love, not as a tired cliché, but as a tool for the times." 

— John W. Barry, The Poughkeepsie (New York) Journal, 21 Sept. 2018

Did You Know?

We won't admonish you if you don't know the origins of today's word—its current meanings have strayed slightly from its history. Admonish was borrowed in the 14th century (via Anglo-French amonester) from Vulgar Latin admonestāre, which itself is probably a derivative of admonestus, the past participle of the Latin verb admonēre, meaning "to warn."  

Admonēre, in turn, was formed by the combination of the prefix ad- and monēre, "to warn." 

Other descendants of monēre in English include monitor, monitory ("giving a warning"), premonition, and an archaic synonym of admonish, monish. Incidentally, admonish has a number of other synonyms as well, including reprove, rebuke, reprimand, reproach, and chide.

Multitudinous

WORD OF THE DAY

multitudinous / adjective /mul-tuh-TOO-duh-nus

Definition
1a: including a multitude of individuals
1b: populous
2: existing in a great multitude
3: existing in or consisting of innumerable elements or aspects

Examples
The author's appearance is expected to attract a multitudinous gathering that will fill the entire auditorium.

"First and foremost are the hiking trails, which while multitudinous and beautiful, are remarkably hard to navigate."
— Jamie Hale, The Oregonian, 24 June 2018

Did You Know?
Multitudinous is one of many English words that make use of the combining form multi-, from Latin multus, meaning "much" or "many."
Multicolor, multifunction, and multimillionaire are just a few of the others. Multitudinous is the kind of highly expressive word that you can rely upon when you want something a little more emphatic than plain old numerous.
Among its synonyms are multiple and multifold, two more members of the multi- family.

Palmary

WORD OF THE DAY

palmary / adjective / PAL-muh-ree

Definition
: outstanding, best

Examples
A daughter of missionaries, Pearl S. Buck wrote many works about Chinese life and culture, with her palmary novel, The Good Earth, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.

"The palmary case of telling someone what to do is to issue, for instance, the simple imperative 'Go away'—an utterance which may or may not have the effect of making its addressee go away, but at any rate tells him to."
— G. J. Warnock, Contemporary Moral Philosophy, 1967

Did You Know?
It was the ancient Romans who first used palmarius to describe someone or something extraordinary. Palmarius literally translates as "deserving the palm." But what does that mean exactly?
Was it inspired by palms of hands coming together in applause? That would be a good guess, but the direct inspiration for palmarius was the palm leaf given to a victor in a sports competition.
That other palm—the one on the hand—is loosely related. The Romans thought the palm tree's leaves resembled an outstretched palm of the hand; they thus used their word palma for both meanings, just as we do with palm in English.
Now, when we award a noun with the modifier palmary, it signifies that thing as the choicest among possible examples.

Gridiron

WORD OF THE DAY

gridiron / noun / GRID-eye-ern

Definition
1: a grate for broiling food
2: something consisting of or covered with a network
3: a football field


Examples
"Despite his prowess on the gridiron, he received little attention from Division-I football programs."
— Tom Layberger, Forbes, 14 Sept. 2018

"[Thomas] Jefferson wanted wide streets, lots of land reserved for public space, and a rectangular pattern of streets. L'Enfant insisted on radial avenues that intersect a gridiron of streets at odd angles. Many city planners believe that if Jefferson's plan had been adopted, there would be fewer traffic problems in Washington, D.C., today."
— Ann Feetham, Cobblestone, 1 Sept. 2012

Did You Know?
Modern gridirons are covered in football players when they're in use, but the original gridirons were more likely to be covered with meat or fish; they were metal gratings used for broiling food over an open fire.
In Middle English, such a grating was called a gredil, a root that gave modern English both gridiron and griddle. How did gridiron become associated with football?
That happened in the late 1800s, when a white grid pattern was added to football fields to help enforce new rules about how many yards a team had to gain to keep possession of the ball.
From high up in the stands, the lines made the playing fields look like cooking gridirons.

Umbrage

WORD OF THE DAY

umbrage / noun / UM-brij

Definition
1: a feeling of pique or resentment at some often fancied slight or insult
2a: shady branches
2b: foliage
3: shade, shadow
4a: an indistinct indication : vague suggestion
4b: hint
4c: a reason for doubt
4d: suspicion

Examples
"Often, after an active morning, she would spend a sunny afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some tree of friendly umbrage."
— Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, 1849

"If you can find one of these big roosts, the birds are quite entertaining to watch. When they settle in for the evening, they're noisy and quarrelsome and seem to take umbrage at many things."
— Jim Wright, The Daily Record (Morristown, New Jersey), 26 July 2018

Did You Know?
"Deare amber lockes gave umbrage to her face." This line from a poem by William Drummond, published in 1616, uses umbrage in its original sense of "shade or shadow," a meaning shared by its Latin source, umbra. (Umbella, the diminutive form of umbra, means "a sunshade or parasol" in Latin and is an ancestor of our word umbrella.)
Beginning in the early 17th century, umbrage was also used to mean "a shadowy suggestion or semblance of something," as when William Shakespeare, in Hamlet, wrote, "His semblable is his mirror, and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more."
In the same century, umbrage took on the pejorative senses "a shadow of suspicion cast on someone" and "displeasure, offense"; the latter is commonly used today in the phrases "give umbrage" or "take umbrage."

Mordant

WORD OF THE DAY

mordant / adjective / MOR-dunt

Definition
1a: biting and caustic in thought, manner, or style
1b: incisive
2: acting as a mordant (as in dyeing)
3: burning, pungent

Examples
"When Clementine tried to tell him that the result might well be a blessing in disguise, [Winston Churchill] maintained his normal standards of mordant wit by replying that 'at the moment it's certainly very well disguised.'"
— Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography, 2001

"For Lucas Hedges, acting is a kind of ongoing education in how to live in the world. Take his performance as a troubled and mordant young man who's just lost his father in Kenneth Lonergan's gorgeously melancholy 2016 film Manchester by the Sea, which Hedges calls 'the most formative role of my life.'"
— Adam Green, Vogue, 24 Sept. 2018

Did You Know?
The etymology of mordant certainly has some bite to it. That word, which came to modern English through Middle French, ultimately derives from the Latin verb mordēre, which means "to bite."
In modern parlance, mordant usually suggests a wit that is used with deadly effectiveness. Mordēre puts the bite into other English terms, too. For instance, that root gave us the tasty morsel ("a tiny bite").
But nibble too many of those and you'll likely be hit by another mordēre derivative: remorse ("guilt for past wrongs"), which comes from Latin remordēre, meaning "to bite again."

Connive

WORD OF THE DAY

connive / verb / kuh-NYVE

Definition

1: to pretend ignorance of or fail to take action against something one ought to oppose

2a : to be indulgent or in secret sympathy 

2b: wink

2c: to cooperate secretly or have a secret understanding

3 : conspire, intrigue

Examples

"Arnold worked out a plan not only to turn over the fort and its men to the British but at the same time to connive at the British capture of George Washington." 

— Gordon S. Wood, The Weekly Standard, 1 June 2018

"Officers who connive and cheat to pad their paychecks aren't just stealing money. They're also eroding the crucial bond between the public and those sworn to protect and serve them." 

— The Boston Globe, 16 July 2018

Did You Know?

Connive may not seem like a troublesome term, but it was to Wilson Follett, a usage critic who lamented that the word "was undone during the Second World War, when restless spirits felt the need of a new synonym for plotting, bribing, spying, conspiring, engineering a coup, preparing a secret attack." 

Follett thought connive should only mean "to wink at" or "to pretend ignorance." 

Those senses are closer to the Latin ancestor of the word: connive comes from the Latin connivēre, which means "to close the eyes" and which is descended from -nivēre, a form akin to the Latin verb nictare, meaning "to wink." 

But many English speakers disagreed, and the "conspire" sense is now the word's most widely used meaning.

Verbose

WORD OF THE DAY

verbose / adjective / ver-BOHSS

Definition
1a: containing more words than necessary
1b: wordy
1c: impaired by wordiness
2: given to wordiness

Examples
"[The] text … is verbose and vague, and so comically overheated that it can feel like a parody of late Tennessee Williams, when that playwright's florid style had graduated to full rococo."
— Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New York Times, 20 Sept. 2018

"But Tuesday's overly verbose—let's call it a diatribe—portrayed Brown in a light we haven't seen to this point. He was visibly frustrated and completely exasperated, as if, in that particular moment, he decided to unfurl eight years of pent up anger and indignation."
— Pro Football Weekly, 13 June 2018

Did You Know?
There's no shortage of words to describe wordiness in English. Diffuse, long-winded, prolix, redundant, windy, repetitive, rambling, and circumlocutory are some that come to mind.
Want to express the opposite idea? Try succinct, concise, brief, short, summary, terse, compact, or compendious.
Verbose, which falls solidly into the first camp of words, comes from Latin verbosus, from verbum, meaning "word."
Other descendants of verbum include verb, adverb, proverb, verbal, and verbicide (that's the deliberate distortion of the sense of a word).