longueur

Definition

A lengthy passage in a dramatic or literary work, especially a dull or tedious one; a period of boredom.

Etymology

Borrowed from French longueur (literally “length”).

Example Sentences

• "Most of the reasons given for its disappearance make sense: people are happier, busier; the work done by the anti-Freudian skeptics has finally taken hold of the popular imagination, so that people have no time for analytic longueurs and no patience with its mystifications."
• "He cultivated the aura, if not quite of the Anti-Christ, at least of an Anti-Sun King, discountenancing his uncle and shocking the dévots by preferring the intimacy and informality of a clique of drinking companions to the formal longueurs of the courtly round […]."
• "[T]he reader can’t help feeling that a few judicious nips and tucks might have dispersed the longueurs that waft around the third quarter of the book."