Words That Mean Wordy Writing
Failures of prose style, which the SAT and GRE both test by asking you to spot them.
11 words
- Bombasticadjective
ostentatiously lofty in style
- Circumlocutionnoun
a style that involves indirect ways of expressing things
- Digressverb
lose clarity or turn aside especially from the main subject of attention or course of argument in writing, thinking, or speaking
- Discursiveadjective
(of e.g. speech and writing) tending to depart from the main point or cover a wide range of subjects
- Grandiloquentadjective
puffed up with vanity; ; ; ; - Newsweek
- Pedanticadjective
marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning especially its trivial aspects
- Prolixadjective
tediously prolonged or tending to speak or write at great length
- Superfluousadjective
serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being
- Tautologynoun
(logic) a statement that is necessarily true
- Turgidadjective
abnormally distended especially by fluids or gas
- Verboseadjective
using or containing too many words
Study these against
A word’s meaning sharpens against its opposite. These sets are the ones worth holding beside wordy writing.