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
Yet, with whatever periphrasis she wrapped it round, the resolve was not to be expressed with a pen.
From Carnival by MacKenzie, Compton
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 Hulme, F. Edward (Frederick Edward)
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 Anderson, Rasmus Björn
Thus has this great and magnificent virtue no name, and as science is powerless in creating words suitable for every-day language, it must rest satisfied with periphrases.
From Elements of Morals With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the State by Janet, Paul
This young man had a scorn of periphrases.
From Demos by Gissing, George
In literature such “barbarisms” were avoided as far as possible, and were replaced by Greek periphrases.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 5 "Greek Law" to "Ground-Squirrel" by Various
This will sometimes require the use of unfamiliar periphrases: the words “music” and “rites” may be given as “the rhythm of life” and “conformity to the ideology.”
From The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I by Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
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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