periphrasis

Prince Bumpo, the heir to the throne, is a mooncalf who mistakes fairy tales for real life, speaks in Elizabethan periphrasis and murmurs to himself: “If only I were a white prince!”

From New York Times ● Sep. 9, 2020

This periphrasis so fascinated Charles W. Morton, now the associate editor of the Atlantic, that he began collecting examples of "Elongated Yellow Fruit" writing.

From Time Magazine Archive

Oddly, they all speak the same puckish periphrasis.

From Time Magazine Archive

What hasty words, I wonder, of the rude and haughty admiral were represented by this sonorous periphrasis?

From Through East Anglia in a Motor Car by J. E. (James Edmund) Vincent

"The ordinary channels of information," to use Sir Robert's periphrasis, are the extraordinary ones too; and not only do they contain whatever Ministers know, but very often "something more."

From Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq. Volume II (of II) by Charles James Lever

Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases?

From Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges by George Saintsbury

This young man had a scorn of periphrases.

From Demos by George Gissing

Later, śḏm-f is ordinarily expressed by periphrases; but by the loss of n, śḏm-n-f became itself sdm-f, which is the ordinary past in demotic.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 1 "Edwardes" to "Ehrenbreitstein" by Various

Sun and moon and so on are spoken of by their natural unmistakable names, or in equally unmistakable poetical periphrases, as in riddles. 

From Modern Mythology by Andrew Lang

This confusion of Pagan and Christian mythology is increased by his habit of finding classical periphrases for the expression of religious ideas.

From Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature Part 1 (of 2) by John Addington Symonds