circumlocution

But in terms of its actual content, the statement was pretty thin gruel, bristling with public relations-style circumlocution and vagueness.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 27, 2026

So what’s with all the indirection and artful circumlocution and what-the-meaning-of-is-is tightrope walking?

From Salon ● May 30, 2019

Not long ago, Joe Biden, who stuttered openly into college, undertook a famously weird circumlocution seemingly to avoid landing on the word Avatar—a sound that he'd just nearly blocked on.

From Slate ● Dec. 6, 2017

He mocked the confusing jargon and circumlocution of physicians and he pressed for the re-examination by the London School of Economics of untrustworthy medical statistics.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 13, 2012

He shuddered at his own craven circumlocution, using so meaningless a word to obscure so hideous a truth.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

But some are prone to ludicrous circumlocutions like “Johnny faces challenges in the lived experience of interactions with his peer group in educational spaces,” instead of “Johnny doesn’t get along with his classmates.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026

Their circumlocutions were as entrancing as their ability to find the most precisely ironic words for difficult-to-name realities.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2025

Beneath the malapropisms and the circumlocutions, though, Palin turned out to have a shrewder feel for Republican voters than those in the press who scorned her, and who underestimated him.

From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2022

In truth, while Ros’s pathos-filled classic now reads as unintentionally comic, its euphuistic style isn’t that much different from the circumlocutions found in late Henry James.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 21, 2018

The convoluted syntax, multiple negatives, indefinite antecedents, and masterful circumlocutions of this statement defy comprehension.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis