longueur

noun

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

   “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.”

   “Claire Fontaine (who are actually a duo) have queered the phrase, lending its pungency and ambiguity to a biennale that I wish were nearly so succinct. There are longueurs. There are detours and incomprehensible delays.”