circumvolution

• “circumvolution," "presentifick circularity," struggle and sprawl within the narrow room of the Spenserian stanza.”

  Milton

• “Heaven makes in one day and one night one complete circumvolution of 365 degrees.”

  Lunheng

• “Well, I felt queerer and queerer, and Southsea Castle began to spin round and round, and the kickers went dancing up and down, and the ships in the harbour were all turning summersets, and every sort of circumvolution and devilment you could think of took place.”

  Will Weatherhelm The Yarn of an Old Sailor

• “Never did a monarch hold so steadfastly to a deadly purpose, or proceed so languidly and with so much circumvolution to his goal.”

  The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 13: 1567, part II

• “Its motion is one of rapid circumvolution, rather than of straightforward impulse by rapid and direct effort; it extends its orbit by small continual and hasty movements, but it does not suddenly alter its position.”

  democracy in America, volume 2

• “Tell me, then, for you can, in what periphrasis of language, in what circumvolution of phrase, I shall envelope, yet not conceal, the plain story.”

  The Letters of Robert Burns

• “Tell me then, for you can, in what periphrasis of language, in what circumvolution of phrase, I shall envelope, yet not conceal this plain story.”

  The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. With a New Life of the Poet, and Notices, Critical and Biographical by Allan Cunningham

• “Reason was too often prevailed upon so far by these promises, as to venture her charge within the eddy of the gulph of Intemperance, where, indeed, the circumvolution was weak, but yet interrupted the course of the vessel, and drew it, by insensible rotations, towards the centre.”

  The Rambler, sections 55-112 (1750-1751); from The Works of Samuel Johnson in Sixteen Volumes, Vol. IV

• “And indeed all humane Affairs, wheresoever reported by several persons, though all were present at the same times and places of their circumvolution, are necessarily subject to some diversity in the rehearsal; one person observing, omitting, contracting, dilating, understanding, or mistaking, one particular point or part of any transaction more than another.”

  Bucaniers of America:

• “These changes in title mark the work more as a decentered network of passages inscribing a kaleidoscopic welter of images than as a polymorphic circumvolution of words as ‘conducting bodies’ — the difference erected by the change in title is exactly that between Simon’s geometric composition and Silliman’s spiraling Tjanting.”

  /ubu Editions, Third Series: 12 New Titles : Kenneth Goldsmith : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

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