wordage

English

Etymology

word +‎ -age

Noun

wordage (countable and uncountable, plural wordages)

1. Words collectively.
2. The excessive use of words; verbiage.
   • 1829 April, "Article VIII" (review of The Cause of Dry Rot Discovered), The Westminster Review, p. 417 (Google books view):

     But the plates are good, and, in reality, sufficient without all the wordage.

   • 1941, Dorothy L. Sayers, chapter 10, in The Mind of the Maker‎^[1], London: Methuen, page 122:

     Here, I think, we must class the portmanteau-wordage of James Joyce, in which the use of verbal and syllabic association is carried so far that its power of unconscious persuasion is lost and the reader’s response is diverted by a conscious ecstasy of enigma-hunting, like a pig rooting for truffles.

3. The number of words used in a text.
   • 1951 July 2, “MacArthur Hearing: Curtain”, in Time, retrieved 21 April 2015:

     The official transcript totaled 2,045,000 words—more than twice the wordage of the Bible.

   • 2002, Julian Barnes, “Flaubert’s Death-Masks”, in Something to Declare, New York: Knopf:

     A work of elucidation couched in a lazily dense style; a biography seemingly concerned with externals but in fact spun from inside the biographer like a spider’s thread; a critical study which exceeds in wordage all the major works of its subject put together…

4. The choice of words used; phraseology.
   • 1990 May 15, Jack Curry, “Winfield Case Heads to Arbitrator”, in New York Times, retrieved 21 April 2015:

     "With the wordage in the contract, we think we have a good case."

Synonyms

• (excessive use of words; verbiage): wordiness
• (number of words): word count
• (choice of words): wording

References

• “wordage”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• dogwear, dowager