as in rambling
using or containing more words than necessary to express an idea
a person known for habitually transforming brief anecdotes into prolix sagas that exhaust their listeners
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Recent Examples of prolix
In 1949, a young American artist named Ray Johnson left Black Mountain College near Asheville, N.C., moved to New York City and began to explore his prolix talents, both visual and verbal.
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Roberta Smith, New York Times, 30 May 2024
His answer is this book: a laudably sincere, exasperatingly prolix and occasionally affecting rumination on the state of Egypt—its society, culture, history and politics—pegged to the maddening bureaucracy of the archive.
—Kapil Komireddi, WSJ, 12 Mar. 2023
There’s a hypnotic quality to this freewheeling central section, a sustained charge that falters in some of the more prolix passages around it.
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Sep. 2022
A certain type of actor thrives in these prolix circumstances.
—Los Angeles Times, 12 Oct. 2021
Ames’s ruminations on the soul are prolix, philosophical, and profoundly sad.
—Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books, 22 Oct. 2020
Words, including those of artists themselves—as prolix in their way as critics, curators, and historians—can serve vision but can also deflect from it.
—Barry Schwabsky, ARTnews.com, 3 Sep. 2019
Recent Examples of Synonyms for prolix
Adjective
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Day trips to Amalfi-style Taormina are well-advised for those who have yet to gawp at its clifftop panoramas across the Mediterranean or its film star hotels, as are jaunts to the rambling flea markets and splendidly scruffy trattorias of nearby Catania.—
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The throwdown came after Trump mocked Newsom in a rambling speech at the Kennedy Center by the incumbant to Republican lawmakers.—
Adjective
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Lopez describes her daughter as an energetic, talkative child who speaks both English and Spanish.—
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Then, like now, people were very talkative.—
Adjective
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Instead, Reeves became Estragon, the more simplistic and long-suffering of the duo, while Winter tackled Vladimir, the more commanding and verbose character.—
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Director Richard Linklater is fond of a verbose protagonist; Hawke and Julie Delpy gabbed through three films’ worth of Before movies, after all.—
Adjective
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With Payton and Nix, in particular, part of the rationale was to get some of Payton’s most wordy calls on the band so the coach could give short-hand to Nix, creating a couple of extra seconds for the quarterback to spit out a call that might be15 or 20 words long.—
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Clearly, this was a bit wordy, so this became ‘parking the bus’, which initially found popularity as an insult for unambitious football, then later was used in a more neutral manner to mean deep defending.—
Cite this Entry
“Prolix.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/prolix. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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