Word Family Worksheets

If you know a talkative soul, but want to pick up a few new adjectives to describe them, then today is your lucky day! 😉

✔ Wordy 

○ Wordy means ‘full of or abounding in words’, and is used to describe a particularly garrulous person who uses a lot of words. 

✔ Talewise 

○ If someone is talewise, they may be addicted to gossiping and are prone to blabbing. 

✔ Speakful 

○ Dating back to the 13th century, speakful comes from the word ‘speak’ and means talkative. 

✔ Word-wood 

○ A now obsolete adjective, word-wood describes someone who is wild or unrestrained in speech. 

✔ Tonguey 

If someone is tonguey, they’re full of ‘tongue’ or talk – with the additional implication that they talk more than do. 

✔ Windy 

○ Verbiage and long-winded, windy is used for speakers or writers who are ‘blustering’, bragging, boastful, and even violent or extravagant in the utterance. 

✔ Long-tongued 

○ As the word implies, long-tongued is used to talk about someone who is excessively talkative and prone to speaking out of turn or revealing secrets. 

✔ Talkful 

○ Following the pattern of speakful before it, talkful is derived from the word ‘talk’ and literally means ‘full of talk’. 

✔ Tongue-ripe 

○ Another highly evocative word, tongue-ripe means voluble, glib, garrulous, and loquacious. 

✔ Garrulous 

○ It’s cropped up a few times already, but garrulous describes a person who is given to much talking, and is fond of indulging in talk or chatter – interestingly, garrulous is also used for birds and inanimate objects that chatter or babble. 

✔ Feather-tongued 

○ Speaking of birds, to be feather-tongued is to be light-tongued and so given to fast and frequent talk. 

✔ Linguacious 

○ Borrowed from the Latin for a tongue, ‘lingua’, and the suffix ‘acious’, meaning ‘given to’ and ‘having much of’, linguacious means abounding in or full or tongue, i.e. talkative. 

✔ Nimble-chop 

○ The first evidence for nimble-chop dates back to 1662 when it was used to describe talkative Jesuit priests. 

✔ Loquacious 

○ You might come across this word in poetic descriptions of birds or water, but when applied to people, loquacious is another interesting synonym for those who are given to much talking. 

✔ Gabby 

○ Not to be confused with ‘gobby’, gabby hails from Scotland and means abounding in gab – a good one for those who have the ‘gift of the gab’. 

✔ Talky 

○ No prizes here: to be talky is to be inclined to – or even abounding in – talk. 

✔ Nimble-mouthed 

○ Just as it says on the tin, to be nimble-mouthed is to be light and quick with talk. 

✔ Gassy 

○ Meaning ‘full of gas’ and ‘excessively effervescent’, gassy people are given to idle talk or are excessively verbose. 

✔ Loose-lipped 

○ Like loose-tongued, if someone is loose-lipped they are uninhibited in their speech.