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
Oddly, they all speak the same puckish periphrasis.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
Be it remarked that this periphrasis indicated his mother; and that the bread he alluded to is made with a species of leaven.
From Cedar Creek From the Shanty to the Settlement by Elizabeth Hely Walshe
"Things by their name I call;" though to my blacksmith I was obliged to use every sort of periphrasis.
From Four Years in France or, Narrative of an English Family's Residence there during that Period; Preceded by some Account of the Conversion of the Author to the Catholic Faith by Henry Digby Beste
But Mr. Frazer has remarked that periphrases for sacred beasts, like ‘Big Feet’ for Bear, are not uncommon.
From Modern Mythology by Andrew Lang
His allusions and learned periphrases elucidate nothing; they put an idle labour on the reader who understands them, and extort from baffled ignorance, at which, perhaps, they are more especially aimed, a foolish admiration.
From Style by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
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
Thus has this great and magnificent virtue no name, and as science is powerless in creating words suitable for every-day language, it must rest satisfied with periphrases.
From Elements of Morals With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the State by Paul Janet
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
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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