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

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

Happiness is with him an aim that we are at liberty to seek directly and without periphrasis.

From Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson by John Morley

In Scaldic poetry, a periphrasis for a “lady” is “the ground of hangings,” or “the bridge of hangings,” all pointing to embroidery.

From Needlework As Art by Marianne Margaret Compton Cust, Viscountess Alford

One of the most frequent periphrases for a wedding, is the expression “joyful event.”

From Village Life in China A Study in Sociology by Arthur H. Smith

But these names have fared like other periphrases.

From The Younger Edda Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda by Rasmus Björn Anderson

His allusions and learned periphrases elucidate nothing; they put an idle labour on the reader who understands them, and extort from baffled ignorance, at which, perhaps, they are more especially aimed, a foolish admiration. 

From Style by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

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

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