wordy
Americanadjective
-
wordier,
comparative
-
wordiest
superlative
-
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
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
A lay reader may find this wordy description difficult to grasp.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2025
The initials RB were short for Racing Bulls, and were used because the company felt that the full team name including its title sponsor, a credit card company, was too wordy.
From BBC ● Dec. 20, 2024
So I prepared two answers— one that is polite but kind of wordy, and one that is a little smart-mouthed.
From "Out of My Mind" by Sharon M. Draper
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
The Foggy Bottom show, which was curated by Kayleigh Bryant Greenwell, is a bit wordier.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 1, 2021
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 George Alfred Townsend
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 Henry Seidel Canby
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