How to Be Verbose

Being verbose is usually a poor method of communication, droning on in pompous persistence. While a bit of the ol' pleonasm is a terrible idea if you're trying to impress a potential employer, keeping a few recondite words at your disposal can be a great defense against the pedantry of others. If you want to turn off all your interlocutors, you can learn the skills necessary to be long-winded, pompous, and overblown. Channel your Polonius and learn to be verbose.

Steps

Being Long-Winded

1. Start speaking without a clear idea of where you’re going. Warren G. Harding, grandiloquent speaker and former President of the United States, had a speech style consisting primarily of “an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea,” according to one political critic. Emulate the long-windedness of the 29th president of the Union.
   
   • Many speakers will start to trail off toward the end of a thought, pausing to take a breath and collect their thoughts. Instead, learn to end passages with openings into new passages, immediately saying, "In other words," or "Additionally," to keep your grip on the conversation firm.
2. Use multitudinous, varied, and divers adjectives. To say a writer or a speaker is verbose is to say that, for him, one accurate adjective could never accomplish what five so-so, mediocre, middling, half-cocked, wobbly adjectives could accomplish by pilling them up in a heap. Verbosity means wordiness. Over-describe every single noun in your speech and you'll be well on your way.
   
   • Don't neglect adverbs, either. If a swan is swimming, it should be "swiftly, gently swimming." Think of each sentence as a Christmas tree that you want to ornament.^[1]
3. Over-explain yourself. The long-winded verbose speakers of the world never seem to know when to quit. Never give up on proving something, even if everyone in the room took your word for it twenty minutes ago.
   
   • Restate every claim and position for ultimate rhetorical effect. Make friends with the phrase “in other words," rephrasing your positions in different language but with exactly the same meaning.
   • Rethink everything you put forward, hedging every claim and debating inwardly with yourself over your statements. When you get to the end of one point, train yourself to say, “On the other hand…” to open up an avenue for further chatter.
4. Embrace digressions and asides. The mind of the verbose should be like a fish tank. Let each thought-fish go wherever it wants, then follow it there. Don't worry so much about where you're going with an argument, just worry about exploring every possible nook and cranny of a conversation before you let it drop.
   
5. Read long-winded writers. While Shakespeare's Polonius might be the patron-saint of the pompous, if you want more art and less matter in your speech, learn from the masters of long-windedness, who actually manage to pull off extreme verbosity.^[2] Check out the following writers of sentence-labyrinthes and pompous characters who never know when to quit:
   
   • Herman Melville
   • Susan Sontag
   • Salvatore Scibona
   • William Faulkner
   • Virginia Woolf
   • Samuel Beckett

Expanding Your Vocabulary

1. Start actively gathering new words to use. Look for obscure word lists, sign up for word-a-day emails and never hesitate to look up a definition if you encounter an unfamiliar word.
   
   • After a while, you may discover that you’ve come down with a nasty case of logolepsy (a love of words). If you look for them, you will find words that are easy to love. Take "Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalia" as an example. This word, which means "a word coined so as to be long" is actually longer than its definition.
2. Study the roots of words. By learning the roots of words, you will be able to discern the meanings of unfamiliar words more easily, helping your build an infinite vocabulary. You will also be able to create neologisms, or new words based on existing definitions.
   
   • If you know enough suffixes and prefixes, you can make up your own behemoth words. The Shakespearean gem "Honorificabilitudinitatibus" started with the simple root word of Honor.
   • Apply unconventional conjugations and parasynthesis (use odd tenses and variations). Sometimes a common word can be verbose if an unusual tense is applied. The word “datum” sounds particularly erudite when compared to the singular “data.”
3. Use long words. Never use one syllable where three will do. In other words, eschew monosyllabic iterations when feasible.^[3]
   
   • If your lexicon is archaic enough, you can add words by using synonymous adjectives. For example, you could describe a redundant speaker as being "Tautologically loquacious,” which has a bit more juice than calling them "Redundantly repetitive,” though it means, more or less, the same thing.
   • Take the word 'hyperpolysyllabic' as your example. It means essentially the same thing if you leave the 'hyper' off, but why waste a perfectly good 17 letter word?
4. Use words correctly. The goal in verbosity is to appear intelligent, not ridiculous. Using an obscure word incorrectly can be deleterious to your illusion of perspicacity. Be sure to check the usage of a new word in several sources before applying it in the real world. All the astute logorrhea in the world won't help you if you're caught saying "Don't condensate me."
   

Overblowing Your Rhetoric

1. Use heavy-handed metaphors. Verbosity also includes a certain measure of pomposity in the execution. If you want to be counted as a verbose speaker or writer, it helps to get lost in the deep water of an overblown (and mixed) metaphor. Every molehill should be not only a mountain, but a mountain on which hordes of philandering demon spawn forth fortnightly.
   
2. Leave no seams in the torrent of words. If you want to run on for a long time, make sure you stitch your prose together ever tighter with gapless precision. In other words, don’t let anyone get a word in edgewise.
   
   • Learn to anticipate the ends of your own sentences and start the next sentence before taking a breath.
   • Learn to hook a reader in with a transitional phrase at the end of a long paragraph that’ll force us to read on, even if we’re bored to tears. Better yet, eschew paragraphing entirely and give no rest for the weary.
3. Sprinkle your prose with phrases from multiple languages. The verbose know one thing to be true: “Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur” (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound). Memorize a few good Latin phrases and insert them whenever you can. Mix in some French or Italian, overemphasizing the pronunciation, and you'll be pretentious in four languages.
   
   • Rather than saying, "He makes a habit of using arcane references", try "His modus operandi seems to be obscurum per obscurius" to give your volubility a bit of international flavor.
4. Interrupt other speakers. If you have any question as to whether or not the floor is yours, it is. Take control of every conversation and don't let go of the talking stick until you've chattered everyone else into submission. Quell dissent like Ross Perot used to: constantly referring to how often you yourself are interrupted. "Can I finish? Can I get a word in please?"
   
   • Learn to ignore body language and other clues that someone else would like to speak. Keep your gaze focused off in the middle-distance as you recount the sea-faring voyages of your childhood. Ignore the snores at the table around you.

Tips

• Playing word games like Scrabble and Crosswords are fast and fun ways to improve your vocabulary.
• Be creative. Even common words can be verbose if applied correctly.
• Check the pronunciation. It is better to use a simple word correctly than to misuse a complex one.
• Know your audience. If you're dealing with a group of English professors it's probably best to avoid pretension altogether. If you're dealing with a group of simpletons you can pretty much make up words as you go along.

Warnings

• The over verbose may be tagged as a fake and a know-it-all.

Things You'll Need

• Dictionary
• Thesaurus

Related wikiHows

• How to Sound Intelligent
• How to Smooth Talk Your Way out of Trouble
• How to Find Things to Talk About
• How to Enrich Your English Language Vocabulary
• How to Expand Your Vocabulary

Sources and Citations

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