at great length

at great length

For a long duration. When I came home after curfew, my mom interrogated me at great length. He spoke at great length about how he had been inspired by his trip.
See also: great, length
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

*at great length

for a long period of time. (*Typically: explain ~; question someone ~; speak ~.) The lawyer questioned the witness at great length.
See also: great, length
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • explain
  • length
  • bag of wind
  • all over the map
  • map
  • a great many
  • great many
  • have to go some
  • have to go some to (do something)
  • (as) tough as leather
References in classic literature
An Inventory of papers, documents, and articles followed at great length on the next three pages.
She wrote at great length the same day; cried profusely over her own epistolary composition; and was remarkably ill-tempered and snappish toward me, when we met in the evening.
One of the passengers being exceedingly anxious to expound at great length to my companion (not to me, of course) the true principles on which books of travel in America should be written by Englishmen, I feigned to fall asleep.
When I had done this at great length, I cried triumphantly, "Does that at last convince you?" And, with that, I once more entered Lineland, taking up the same position as before.
They did so, and the curate questioned the peasant at great length as to how he had found Don Quixote.
They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it was utterly impossible to report what he had said.
Gliddon replied at great length, in phonetics; and but for the deficiency of American printing-offices in hieroglyphical type, it would afford me much pleasure to record here, in the original, the whole of his very excellent speech.
Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism.
He talked on, therefore, at great length, while I merely leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, and amused myself with munching raisins and filliping the stems about the room.
All were splendidly armed, and my Saxon authority (in the Wardour Manuscript) records at great length their devices, their colours, and the embroidery of their horse trappings.
They lingered long over their cups, Master Middle emptying one after another while the stranger expounded at great length on the best plans for coming at and capturing Robin Hood.
They had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each other, and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immense amount of amusement.
If the Constitutional Court repeals the lustration law, it will have to elaborate its decision at great length to prevent street lustration from superseding a legal one, those who have drafted the law warn.
IN his attack on me (Your Say, 16.7.07) Andy McDonald erects a straw man then proceeds at great length to demolish it.
During the build-up to the 2003 attack on Iraq, the Bush administration spoke at great length about Saddam's supposedly massive arsenal of biological and chemical weapons without acknowledging that whatever capacity he had to manufacture such arms had been provided to him by the United States under president Reagan and the first President Bush (with Donald Rumsfeld, then a special presidential envoy to Baghdad, playing a pivotal role in a 1983 meeting with Saddam).