circumlocution

But in terms of its actual content, the statement was pretty thin gruel, bristling with public relations-style circumlocution and vagueness.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 27, 2026

“You’re now a beautiful, strong flower, who must protect your delicate petals and clean them regularly,” she adds, in one of the film’s more hilarious examples of motherly misunderstanding and circumlocution.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 9, 2022

So what’s with all the indirection and artful circumlocution and what-the-meaning-of-is-is tightrope walking?

From Salon ● May 30, 2019

Not long ago, Joe Biden, who stuttered openly into college, undertook a famously weird circumlocution seemingly to avoid landing on the word Avatar—a sound that he'd just nearly blocked on.

From Slate ● Dec. 6, 2017

He shuddered at his own craven circumlocution, using so meaningless a word to obscure so hideous a truth.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

Bush, famously, is a gaffe specialist, the purveyor of scrambled-hash syntax, madcap circumlocutions, spoonerisms and other “Bushisms” that have haunted the internet — or as Bush would have it, internets — for decades.

From New York Times ● Jun. 8, 2022

Corey’s dizzying mix of mock-intellectual circumlocutions, earnest political tirades and slapstick one-liners made him the king of comedic confusion and earned him the nickname “professor.”

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 10, 2017

It extended even to matters of language: Although his English was fluent, he peppered it with French circumlocutions and grammatical constructions.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 16, 2016

Here at last, it seemed, was someone willing to cut through the bland circumlocutions and communicate what no one else was brave enough to spell out.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 25, 2015

The convoluted syntax, multiple negatives, indefinite antecedents, and masterful circumlocutions of this statement defy comprehension.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis