periphrasis
Example Sentences
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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
They had what were called "the courtly manners of the old school"; were diffuse in style, and abounded in periphrasis.
From Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography by George William Erskine Russell
In all inquiries the writer has found it necessary to use periphrasis or to appeal to some illustration.
From Unwritten Literature of Hawaii The Sacred Songs of the Hula by Nathaniel Bright Emerson
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
This, I must repeat, is the true way of learning the meaning of words; and leaves impressions, which no dictionary, with its periphrases and mere approximations to synonymes can give.
From Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class and Moral Culture of Infancy. by Mary E. Mann
Sun and moon and so on are spoken of by their natural unmistakable names, or in equally unmistakable poetical periphrases, as in riddles.
From Modern Mythology by Andrew Lang
These double and recurring epithets of Homer are a softer form of the quaint Northern periphrases, which make the sea the 'swan's bath,' gold, the 'dragon's hoard,' men, the 'ring-givers,' and so on.
From The Odyssey Done into English prose by Andrew Lang
These sagas are not to be so forgotten or disproved as to take away from poetry old periphrases which great skalds have been pleased with.
From The Younger Edda Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda by Rasmus Björn Anderson
Vocabulary lists containing periphrasis
Reading: Literature - Literary Devices & Figures of Speech - High School
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Rhetoric
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Around and Around: Peri
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