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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. The use of circumlocution.
  2. n. A circumlocution.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A roundabout way of speaking; a roundabout phrase or expression; the use of more words than are necessary to express the idea; a phrase employed to avoid a common and trite manner of expression; circumlocution.
  2. n. Synonyms Circumlocution, etc. See pleonasm.

Wiktionary

  1. n. The use of a longer expression instead of a shorter one with a similar meaning, for example "I am going to" instead of "I will".
  2. n. Expressing a grammatical meaning (such as a tense) using a syntactic construction rather than morphological marking.
  3. n. The substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name (a species of circumlocution)
  4. n. The use of a proper name as a shorthand to stand for qualities associated with it.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. See periphrase.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a style that involves indirect ways of expressing things

Etymologies

  1. Latin, from Greek, from periphrazein, to express periphrastically : peri-, peri- + phrazein, to say; see gwhren- in Indo-European roots.

Examples

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  • knitandpurl "as the animals grow tired of our zen mistakes—
    sitting Indian-style in airliner seats
    that have washed up on the shore,
    calling the snake a rope and the rope a belt—
    initiates of a time periphrasis so elaborate
    that even Virgil gets a little cross"
    from Postpoem by Rick Snyder, in Escape from Combray, p 9 Oct 7, 2010
  • quaxanta the Greek cousin of circumlocution Dec 12, 2006

‘periphrasis’ has been looked up 3742 times, loved by 5 people, added to 40 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 18.