long-windedly

comparative more long-windedly · superlative most long-windedly

1. In a long-winded manner; employing more lengthy phrasing than required.

   But then I thought, perhaps this is how these Dutch Protestants behave when they fall in love: prudently, long-windedly, without fire, without grace.

   2009, J. M. Coetzee, “Adriana”, in Summertime, London: Harvill Secker

   3 more examples

   […] an Italian piece of many parts and much intricacy—it is only a Master Braham or Madame Catalani who has got throat long enough and flexible enough for it; which stretching out as gracefully as a hen drinketh water, she cackles out the whole piece as sweetly as Orpheus, as dexterously as a fiddler’s elbow, as long-windedly as the pipe of an ass, and as proudly as if she had laid a golden egg.

   1814, James Gilchrist, Reason the True Arbiter of Language; Custom a Tyrant, London: J. Johnson, page 21

   One who had caught a glimpse of the shining yet solemn eyes of the youth, as he walked home, would wonder no longer that he should talk as he did—so sedately, yet so poetically—so long-windedly, if you like, yet so sensibly—even wisely.

   1875, George Macdonald, chapter 18, in Malcolm, volume I, London: Henry S. King, pages 219–220

   1962, Isaac Babel quoted by Konstantin Paustovsky in “Reminiscences of Babel” in Patricia Blake and Max Hayward (editors), Dissonant Voices in Soviet Literature, New York: Pantheon, p. 50, Perhaps my sentences are too short. This may be partly due to my chronic asthma. I can’t talk long-windedly; I’m short of breath.

   Synonyms: verbosely