Verbiage comes from French 'verbiage' ('wordiness'), from Middle French 'verbier' ('to chatter'), from Old French 'verbe' ('word'), from Latin 'verbum' ('word'). The historical chain includes French verbiage and Latin verbum. The quoted older senses, "verbiage", "wordiness", "verbier", "to chatter", and "verbe", supply the semantic anchors for verbiage. The formation is best read as borrowed: the word verbiage carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "excessive or unnecessarily wordy language". Related English forms include verbal, verbose, and verb. The result is a noun whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.