periphrasis
Example Sentences
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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
Oddly, they all speak the same puckish periphrasis.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
Hazlitt affirms that this popular diction is "an expression or combination of words conveying a truth to the mind by a figure, periphrasis, antithesis, or hyperbole."
From Proverb Lore Many sayings, wise or otherwise, on many subjects, gleaned from many sources by F. Edward (Frederick Edward) Hulme
All transitive verbs involve the notion of cause as activity, and would have to be replaced by some cumbrous periphrasis before this notion could be eliminated.
From Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
But the reason why Christianity uses these periphrases or metaphors, these euphemisms for death, is the opposite of the reason why the world uses them.
From Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) by Alexander Maclaren
Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases?
From Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges by George Saintsbury
The piece was written in the style of a tragic serial story: abstract phrases, bureaucratic epithets, academic periphrases.
From Jean Christophe: in Paris The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House by Gilbert Cannan
These sagas are not to be so forgotten or disproved as to take away from poetry old periphrases which great skalds have been pleased with.
From The Younger Edda Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda by Rasmus Björn Anderson
The only person who ventured to enter his room was Don Rosendo, who talked to him in a kind and dignified style, adorned with periphrases and florid periods befitting his character as a writer.
From The Fourth Estate, vol. 2 by Armando Palacio Vald?s
Vocabulary lists containing periphrasis
Reading: Literature - Literary Devices & Figures of Speech - High School
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Rhetoric
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Around and Around: Peri
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