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

For anyone else, selling an exposé as questionably founded as this would be an exercise in circumlocution, obfuscation and half-truths.

From The Guardian ● Apr. 24, 2018

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

Their circumlocutions were as entrancing as their ability to find the most precisely ironic words for difficult-to-name realities.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2025

The story rushes forwards, with dizzying circumlocutions, from there.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 20, 2019

In truth, while Ros’s pathos-filled classic now reads as unintentionally comic, its euphuistic style isn’t that much different from the circumlocutions found in late Henry James.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 21, 2018

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

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