Dictionary

wordage en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree English word Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Latin -ātus Proto-Indo-European *-ikos Proto-Italic *-ikos Latin -icus Latin -āticus Latin -āticum Old French -agebor. Middle English -age English -age English wordage From word + -age.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Words collectively, considered in a mass sense.
   • Near-synonym: language
2. (countable, uncountable) The excessive use of words.
   • But the plates are good, and, in reality, sufficient without all the wordage. 1829 April, "Article VIII" (review of The Cause of Dry Rot Discovered), The Westminster Review, p. 417 (Google books view)
   • Here, I think, we must class the portmanteau-wordage of James Joyce, in which the use of verbal and syllabic association is carried so far that its power of unconscious persuasion is lost and the reader’s response is diverted by a conscious ecstasy of enigma-hunting, like a pig rooting for truffles. 1941, Dorothy L. Sayers, chapter 10, in The Mind of the Maker, London: Methuen, page 122:
3. (countable, uncountable) The number of words used in a text: synonym of word count.
   • The official transcript totaled 2,045,000 words—more than twice the wordage of the Bible. 1951 July 2, “MacArthur Hearing: Curtain”, in Time, retrieved 21 Apr 2015:
   • A work of elucidation couched in a lazily dense style; a biography seemingly concerned with externals but in fact spun from inside the biographer like a spider’s thread; a critical study which exceeds in wordage all the major works of its subject put together… 2002, Julian Barnes, “Flaubert’s Death-Masks”, in Something to Declare, New York: Knopf:
4. (countable, uncountable) The choice of words used: word choice.
   • "With the wordage in the contract, we think we have a good case." 1990 May 15, Jack Curry, “Winfield Case Heads to Arbitrator”, in New York Times, retrieved 21 Apr 2015:
   • Near-synonyms: phrasing; terminology; phraseology

Forms

Synonyms

phraseology · phrasing · terminology · language · wording · verbiage · verbiage · diction · wordiness · circumlocution