Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your vocabulary. This week's word:
GARRULOUS
Perhaps you are chatty, talkative in a friendly way. Or you may be loquacious, wordy in a high-flown way. But if you learn that people call you garrulous (pronounced GARE-uh-lus), you are really talking too much.
Garrulity is marked by long-winded and diffuse talk, often an aimless or meandering wordiness. Garrulous, from the Latin garrulous, in turn from garrire, "to babble" or "to chatter," is a word frequently applied to older speakers given to extended reminiscences of marginal interest to the hearer.
Example: From Sally Jenkins, "Little Fanfare for an Uncommon Man," in The Washington Post of October 18, 2006, on the Indianapolis Colts' Marvin Harrison: "So, it may come as a surprise to learn that Harrison is the best wide receiver in the NFL, and perhaps on his way to being the best of all time, certainly better than another other wide receiver you ever heard of, those garrulous self-promoters with their megaphone egos, and Klaxon mouths, and stage props hidden in their socks.