Thursday, September 10, 2009

Pet Peeve of the Day: "verbage"

The word is "verbiage" not "verbage."

ver⋅bi⋅age

–noun
1. overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness; verbosity.
2. manner or style of expressing something in words; wording: a manual of official verbiage.

Slang Dictionary

verbage

/ver'b*j/ n. A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of verbiage that assimilates it to the word `garbage'. Compare content-free. More pejorative than `verbiage'.

It's fine with me if you use "verbage" if you consciously mean this as there's nothing wrong with coining a good word, but don't let's adulterate the language unwittingly.

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