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

This proves that the use of that periphrasis was general, and that it must have dated back to a much earlier period.

From The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism by Franz Cumont

As that poem explains, his name could not be used in elegiac verse: hence the periphrasis in this passage.

From The Last Poems of Ovid by Mark Bear Akrigg

He that hath complex ideas without names for them, wants liberty and dispatch in his expressions, and is necessitated to use periphrases.

From An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4 by John Locke

The philosophic pride of the eighteenth century was tickled by the use of general terms in description; the chosen periphrases are always more comprehensive than the names that they replace.

From Milton by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases?

From Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges by George Saintsbury

Although the language is in parts ornate to a degree, the old periphrases are wholly excluded; and when simple things have to be said they are said with the utmost simplicity.

From A Short History of French Literature by George Saintsbury

One of the most frequent periphrases for a wedding, is the expression “joyful event.”

From Village Life in China A Study in Sociology by Arthur H. Smith