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
Happiness is with him an aim that we are at liberty to seek directly and without periphrasis.
From Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson by Morley, John
There is the usual twaddle about "moral force," forsooth, under which saving periphrasis, now-a-days, every rebel ranter in field, or tub, or conventicle, insinuates lawless violence without naming it.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 by Various
He has remnants of the old periphrases, the cumbrous mythological allusions, the poetical “properties” of French verse.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 2 "French Literature" to "Frost, William" by Various
Robertson was, perhaps, the first man to adapt the polished periphrases of the pulpit to historical generalization.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 6 "English Language" to "Epsom Salts" by Various
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
But Mr. Frazer has remarked that periphrases for sacred beasts, like ‘Big Feet’ for Bear, are not uncommon.
From Modern Mythology by Lang, Andrew
All who have even a slight acquaintance with sagas know the extraordinary periphrases for common objects, for men and maidens, for ships and swords, that bestrew them.
From The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) by Saintsbury, George
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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