- the state or quality of being unnecessarily or tediously wordy; verbosity: The book offers food for thought but, for all its prolixity, fails to effectively explain what is at the core of irony as a rhetorical strategy.
- a tendency to speak or write at great or tedious length:As a communicator, the official suffers from a lethal mix of ailments: terminal prolixity, rampant hyperbole, and a preference for bureaucratic jargon.