Having length; long; not brief; tiresomely long. Applied often to dissertations or discourses; as, 'a lengthy oration,' 'a lengthy speech.'--Worcester.
This word was once very common among us, both in writing and in the language of conversation; but it has been so much ridiculed by Americans as well as Englishmen, that in writing it is now generally avoided. Mr. Webster has admitted it into his dictionary; but (as need hardly be remarked) it is not in any of the English ones. It is applied by us, as Mr. Webster justly observes, chiefly to writings or discourses. Thus we say, a lengthy pamphlet, a lengthy sermon, &c. The English would say, a long or (in the more familiar style) a longish sermon. It may be here remarked, by the way, that they make much more use of the termination ish than we do; but this is only in the language of conversation.--Pickering.
Mr. Pickering has many other interesting remarks on this word, for which I refer the reader to his work. The word has been gradually forcing its way into general use since the time in which he wrote; and that too in England is well as in America. Thus Mr. Rush, in relating a conversation which he had in London, observes: "Lord Harrowby spoke of words that had obtained a sanction in the United States, in the condemnation of which he could not join; as, for example, lengthy, which imported, he said, what was tedious as well as long--an idea that no other English word seemed to convey as well.--Residence in London, p. 294. The Penny Cyclopedia remarks on it to the same effect, and even disputes its American origin.
A writer in the Boston Daily Advertiser, under the signature of W. X., says, that he has met with the word lengthy in the London Times, and the Liverpool Chronicle, in Blackwood's Magazine, and the Saturday Magazine, in the British Critic, Quarterly Review, Monthly Review, Eclectic Review, Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Reviews; in the writings of Dr. Dibdin, Bishop Jebb, Lord Byron, Coleridge, &c. &c. If the English are indebted to American genius for the invention of this precious word, they have made some improvements upon it, which they may boast of, for ought that is known to the contrary, as their own. Granby, an English author, uses the word lengthiness, which is a regularly formed noun from lengthy. Campbell uses the word lengthily. In his "Letters from the South," he says:
I could discourse lengthily on the names of Jugurtha, Juba, Syphax, &c.
and again:
The hair of the head is bound lengthily behind.
Here follow a few examples from English and American writers, out of the many that present themselves:
Murray has sent or will send a double copy of the Bride and Giaour; in the last one some lengthy additions; pray accept them according to the old custom.--Lord Byron's Letter to Dr. Clarke, Dec. 13, 1813.
All this excitement was created by two lengthy paragraphs in the Times.--London Athenæum, July 12, 1844, p. 697.
Chalmers's Political Annals, in treating of South Carolina--is by no means as lengthy as Mr. Hewitt's History.--Drayton's South Carolina.
I did not mean to have been so lengthy when I began.--Jefferson, Writ.
I forget whether Mr. Sibthorpe has mentioned, in any of his numerous and lengthy episles, this circumstance.--Mrs. Clavers's Forest Life.