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
"Things by their name I call;" though to my blacksmith I was obliged to use every sort of periphrasis.
From Four Years in France or, Narrative of an English Family's Residence there during that Period; Preceded by some Account of the Conversion of the Author to the Catholic Faith by Beste, Henry Digby
Periphras′tic, -al, containing or expressed by periphrasis or circumlocution.—adv.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various
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
The typical Coptic root thus became biliteral rather than triliteral, and the verb, by means of periphrases, developed tenses of remarkable precision.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 1 "Edwardes" to "Ehrenbreitstein" by Various
Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases?
From Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges by Saintsbury, George
The age of Delille wished to see everything described in elegant periphrases, and the periphrases arranged in harmonious verses.
From A Short History of French Literature by Saintsbury, George
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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