Circumlocutious

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Using many words to express something that could be said more briefly, or characterized by indirect and wordy speech
2. Expressing ideas with an excessive number of words instead of being concise
3. Speaking or writing in a roundabout way that avoids directness and simplicity

Etymology: Charles Dickens gave the root noun its most famous villain. In "Little Dorrit," the Circumlocution Office is a government department whose real work is delaying action through endless procedure, and readers recognised the joke because the phrase already meant talking around a point rather than to it. The noun comes from Latin "circumlocutio," built from "circum," meaning "around," and "loqui," meaning "to speak." Latin writers on rhetoric used it for a roundabout way of expressing an idea, and English adopted it with that sense of going around a point intact. The adjective is an English formation: the noun's stem with the suffix "-ous," meaning "characterised by" or "full of." It is a rare, somewhat playful word, and its meaning follows directly from its parts. A circumlocutious speaker takes the long way round.

Synonyms: verbose, wordy, long-winded, diffuse, rambling

Antonyms: concise, succinct, direct, terse, brief