periphrastic

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

But it seems to this reader, Rebecca becoming Maud also speaks to the preoccupation of this entire book: the periphrastic construction of identity itself.

From New York Times • Mar. 29, 2022

He misrepresents, distorts, bisects sentences and employs periphrastic phrases to make his points.

From Time Magazine Archive

But its fault even in that part is that he confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic.

From The Spirit of the Age Contemporary Portraits by Hazlitt, William

Such of his sermons as are still extant are prosy, long-winded, dogmatic absurdities, overloaded with periphrastic illustrations in scriptural language.

From The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 by Parry, Edward Abbott

No single individual could deliberately have set to work in order to abolish the old Latin genitive, and to replace it by the periphrastic compound de illo.

From Lectures on The Science of Language by Müller, Max