Verbiage

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Verbiage \Ver"bi*age\ (?; 48), n. [F. verbiage, from OF. verbe a
     word. See {Verb}.]
     The use of many words without necessity, or with little
     sense; a superabundance of words; verbosity; wordiness.
     [1913 Webster]
  


           Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking.
                                                    --W. Irving.
     [1913 Webster]
  
           This barren verbiage current among men.  --Tennyson.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  verbiage
       n 1: overabundance of words
       2: the manner in which something is expressed in words; "use
          concise military verbiage"- G.S.Patton [syn: {wording}, {diction},
           {phrasing}, {phraseology}, {choice of words}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  55 Moby Thesaurus words for "verbiage":
     choice of words, circumambages, circumbendibus, circumlocution,
     cloud of words, composition, dialect, diction, expansiveness,
     expression, floridity, floridness, flow of words, flux of words,
     formulation, grammar, idiom, language, lexicon, lexis, locution,
     logorrhea, long-windedness, longiloquence, nimiety, parlance,
     periphrase, periphrasis, phrase, phraseology, phrasing, pleonasm,
     prolixity, redundancy, repetition, rhetoric, roundabout, speech,
     stock of words, talk, talkativeness, tautology, thesaurus, usage,
     use of words, usus loquendi, verbalism, verbality, verbosity,
     vocabulary, wordage, wordhoard, wordiness, wording, words
  
  

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  verbiage n. When the context involves a software or hardware system,
     this refers to {{documentation}}. This term borrows the connotations of
     mainstream `verbiage' to suggest that the documentation is of marginal
     utility and that the motives behind its production have little to do
     with the ostensible subject.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  verbiage
       
          When the context involves a software or hardware system, this
          refers to {documentation}.  This term borrows the connotations
          of mainstream "verbiage" to suggest that the documentation is
          of marginal utility and that the motives behind its production
          have little to do with the ostensible subject.
       
          [{Jargon File}]