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
He recited the poem, which, however—for we possess it—only proves that between sleeping and waking eighteen lines of dreamy periphrasis may express a single idea.
From Amenities of Literature Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature by Isaac Disraeli
And with this happy periphrasis, our friend admitted his defeat.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 28, February, 1860 by Various
The only person who ventured to enter his room was Don Rosendo, who talked to him in a kind and dignified style, adorned with periphrases and florid periods befitting his character as a writer.
From The Fourth Estate, vol. 2 by Armando Palacio Vald?s
All these things might be alleged against Lydgate, but then, they are the periphrases of a polite preacher, who talks of Adam, and would not like to mention anything painful to the pew-renters.
From Middlemarch by George Eliot
Participles.—These are active and passive, perfect and imperfect, in the old language, but all are replaced by periphrases in Coptic.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 1 "Edwardes" to "Ehrenbreitstein" by Various
He gradually acquired a reputation as a poet by his epistles, in which things are not called by their ordinary names but are hinted at by elaborate periphrases.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 10 "David, St" to "Demidov" by Various
The piece was written in the style of a tragic serial story: abstract phrases, bureaucratic epithets, academic periphrases.
From Jean Christophe: in Paris The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House by Gilbert Cannan
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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