Learn your roots: verbiage

Our delightful and erudite news editor sashayed through the engine room hatch t'other day chortling over a newly arrived press release. Not the first time I've heard her react in this was to a press release, of course, but in this case the cause of her mirth was the heading: "VERBIAGE".

No doubt someone at the PR agency thought verbiage means 'words' from the Latin verbum. Not so. It's from 19th century French and means "excessively lengthy or technical speech".

Oh, the perils of neglecting a classical edukashun.