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

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

Oddly, they all speak the same puckish periphrasis.

From Time Magazine Archive

But in Puritan America there is an additional problem, which I can hardly explain without a periphrasis.

From What I Saw in America by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

There is the usual twaddle about "moral force," forsooth, under which saving periphrasis, now-a-days, every rebel ranter in field, or tub, or conventicle, insinuates lawless violence without naming it.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 by Various

He abounded in periphrases as highly coloured as sacred pictures.

From Renée Mauperin by Alys Hallard

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 Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

In ordinary conversation do not seek periphrases, subtleties, or figures of speech.

From George Washington's Rules of Civility Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway by Moncure Daniel Conway

Robertson was, perhaps, the first man to adapt the polished periphrases of the pulpit to historical generalization.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 6 "English Language" to "Epsom Salts" by Various