logorrhea

plural logorrheas · alternative logorrhoea · alternative logorrhœa

1. UScountablehumorousoftenuncountableExcessive talkativeness.

   His purchase of a Dictaphone no doubt encouraged his natural loquacity, his ingrained prolixity (which he himself logorrhoea).

   2013, David Caute, “Preface”, in Isaac & Isaiah: The Covert Punishment of a Cold War Heretic, New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page xiii

   3 more examples

   These "Symbolists" are characterised by unbounded vanity and self-sufficiency; they are highly emotional; their thinking is hazy and disconnected. They suffer from "Logorrhea" or "sickly talkativeness," and are unable to perform any work which requires concentration and persistency.

   1894 October 12, “Literary Degeneration”, in Public Opinion […], volume LXVI, number 1,725, London: […] Spottiswoode & Co., […], →OCLC, page 460, column 1

   [Jacques] Rivette, bluntly, suffers from a good case of logorrhea. Even if he had none of these rationales, he would still make long films. In interviews he speaks in endless, ebullient sentences that surround their subjects like spider's webs and sometimes suffocate them.

   1976, James Monaco, “Rivette: The Process of Narrative”, in The New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, footnote, page 312

   The baritone is angry, but still controlled: he does not indulge in compulsive over-rapid spurts of logorrhoeas but keeps to a 'chopped, short, hard, very pointed' staccato-like delivery, excited, but well articulated through interruptions of differing lengths.

   1984, István Anhalt, Alternative Voices: Essays on Contemporary Vocal and Choral Composition, Toronto, Ont.; Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, →ISBN, page 85

   Synonyms: garrulousness, loquaciousness, chattiness, diarrhea of the mouth, garrulity, garrulousness, logorrhoea, loquaciousness · Antonyms: reticence, taciturnity

2. UScountablehumorousoftenuncountableExcessive use of words in writing; prolixity.

   The early period of glasnost' encouraged a variety of graphomania and logorrhea—from numerous letters to the newspapers to memoirs, "true stories," opinions, and revelations of wide political range.

   1994, Svetlana Boym, “Glasnost’, Graphomania, and Popular Culture”, in Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia, Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, published 1995, →ISBN, part 3 (Writing Common Places), page 205

   5 more examples

   The writer should endeavor to have his observations first of all, exact, then apposite, and finally as brief as the nature of the case will admit. [...] Logorrhea and irrelevancy are the bane of a society.

   1878 April, “Editorial. Local Medical Societies.”, in W. C. Chapman, Thomas Waddel, editors, The Toledo Medical and Surgical Journal, volume II, number 4, Toledo, Oh.: Medical Press Association, →OCLC, page 134

   So when I settled down that day I wrote feverishly and I wrote joyously. I wrote until my fingers were cramped and my head was empty. I surrendered to a blithe logorrhea that left me contentedly limp and lax and in need of an hour or two of open air.

   1919, Arthur Stringer, “The Nile-green Roadster”, in The Man Who Couldn’t Sleep, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, →OCLC, page 317

   What must be said may sometimes be difficult to say and may require lots and lots of language—hence [Jacques] Derrida's endless logorrheas—but Derrida never raises his hands to Heaven in despair because his reading experience would exceed what he wishes to say.

   2005, Fred [R.] Ankersmit, “From Language to Experience”, in Sublime Historical Experience (Cultural Memory in the Present), Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 83

   In many cases Philip [II of Spain] lapsed into a logorrhoea that not only revealed the thought processes that underlay his decisions but also shared details on his personal life – when and where he ate and slept; what he had just read; which trees and flowers he wanted to plant in his gardens (and where); how problems with his eyes, his legs or his wrist, or a cold or a headache, had made him fall behind with his paperwork.

   2014, Geoffrey Parker, “Preface”, in Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II, New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page xiv

   Thus, from the 70s on, all the wondrous legal forms of 'self-management negotiations' (dogovaranja) proved inefficient within toothless 'indicative planning' and a profit-bent capitalist market. It spawned unbelievable logorrheas, for example in the norms occasioned by the 1972–80 laws about the new 'delegate system' of elections [...].

   2016, Darko Suvin, “In Production: Rise and Fall of Self-management”, in Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities: An X-ray of Socialist Yugoslavia (Historical Materialism), Leiden; Boston, Mass.: Brill, →ISBN, →ISSN, part 3 (Self-government vs. Alienation: […]), page 260

   Synonyms: ambages, circumlocution, logorrhoea, long-windedness, overwordiness, periphrase, periphrasis, perissology · Antonyms: brevity, briefness, conciseness, concision, laconicalness, laconicism, laconicity, laconism

3. UScountableuncountablehuman sciencesExcessive and often uncontrollable speaking due to a mental disorder.

   But, then, these persons have not only a copia verborum as to knowledge, but a volubility sometimes amounting to a logorrhœa in expressing what they know—although that may not be much.

   1874 April, Thomas Laycock, “Article I.—On Certain Organic Disorders and Defects of Memory.”, in Edinburgh Medical Journal, […], volume XIX, part II, number X, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, […]; London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., →OCLC, pages 869–870

   3 more examples

   When the patient was admitted to this hospital five years ago, the symptoms of excitement in the wide sense, violence, aggressiveness, destructiveness, logorrhœa, were in the foreground as they had been during the previous attacks.

   1906 April, Clarence B[ynold] Farrar, “Clinical Demonstrations”, in Henry M. Hurd et al., editors, The American Journal of Insanity, volume LXII, number 4, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 631

   In agreement with the general consensus of writers on the subject, they affirmed that logorrhea (a loss of control over the flow of speech and subsequent flood of verbiage often seen in adult Wernicke's aphasics) is not characteristic of aphasic children.

   1980, Mahin Hassibi; Harry Breuer, Jr., “Specific Language Dysfunctioning in Children: A Historical Overview”, in Disordered Thinking and Communication in Children, New York, N.Y.: Plenum Press, →ISBN, page 35

   The quantity of speech may be increased in mania and anxiety but reduced in dementia, schizophrenia and depression. [...] In logorrhoea, also called volubility, the speech is fluent and rambling, with the use of many words.

   2011, Basant K. Puri, Ian H. Treasaden, “Classification, Aetiology, Management and Prognostic Factors”, in Textbook of Psychiatry, 3rd edition, Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 63, column 1