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

Periphras′tic, -al, containing or expressed by periphrasis or circumlocution.—adv.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various

The story does not lack of detail, though it is noteworthy that Petrarch, in his "Trionfo d'Amore," decently veils the victim in a periphrasis.

From Little Novels of Italy by Maurice Henry Hewlett

This confusion of Pagan and Christian mythology is increased by his habit of finding classical periphrases for the expression of religious ideas.

From Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature Part 1 (of 2) by John Addington Symonds

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

Later, śḏm-f is ordinarily expressed by periphrases; but by the loss of n, śḏm-n-f became itself sdm-f, which is the ordinary past in demotic.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 1 "Edwardes" to "Ehrenbreitstein" by Various

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

The age of Delille wished to see everything described in elegant periphrases, and the periphrases arranged in harmonious verses.

From A Short History of French Literature by George Saintsbury