verbalism

The excess of verbalism, indeed, gives the play a sugary and monotonous effect, and its poetry loses connection with character or situation.

There is a certain affinity, apparently at least, between that formal vice of verbalism and another defect of the mind, whose origins may, however, be varied.

One of the catchwords of the day was to insist on a knowledge of things instead of a knowledge of words, on “realism” instead of “verbalism.”

This use of words would again become mere verbalism, a mere talking about words—mere speculation having nothing to do with facts or with correct thinking, in which there is no intermixing of dimensions.

We may surround the subject with a vague and attractive idealistic verbalism, but we come back to this as a starting point.