Periphrasis (Noun)
Meaning
A style that involves indirect ways of expressing things.
Classification
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents.
Examples
- The author's use of periphrasis throughout the novel left many readers scratching their heads as they struggled to decipher the intended meaning.
- The politician's response was full of periphrasis, dodging the question with clever turns of phrase but ultimately revealing little of substance.
- The writer's tendency to rely on periphrasis made her writing feel overly elaborate and sometimes even incomprehensible to her critics.
- In a clever example of periphrasis, the poet described the sun as "a burning ball of golden fire that rises in the east and sets in the west" rather than simply saying "sun".
- The teacher encouraged her students to use periphrasis in their essays to make their writing more engaging and dynamic, but warned them not to overdo it and risk being unclear.