Quotes About Circumlocution

A kenning is a metaphorical circumlocution consisting of paired nouns or a noun phrase. For example, in ancient Icelandic verse, a sword is not a sword but an "icicle of blood"; a ship is not a ship but the "horse of the sea"; and eyes are not eyes but the "moons of the forehead." Similarly, the earth is "the floor of the hall of the winds" or "the sea trodden on by animals," while fire is "destroyer of timber" or "the sun of houses.

Your state has been seen, and will be reported on. Only it is necessary that you do not yawn. Or, of course, speak. Discretion in all things in all things is needed. She was reminding them, and she hoped they realised it, that they were not circumcised. The circumlocution expected of a high-born Syrian princess was sometimes a trial to Sara Khatun.

The silence lasted precisely five seconds, during which time eyes roamed other eyes, several throats were cleared, and no one moved in his chair. It was as if a decision were being reached without discussion: evasion was to be avoided. Congressman Efrem Walters, out of the hills of Tennessee by way of the Yale Law Review, was not to be dismissed with facile circumlocution that dealt with the esoterica of clandestine manipulations. Bullshit was out.

Either that, or we must resort to endless circumlocution like the Faculty Statutes of my own university, which avoid personal pronouns by repeating the noun, the individual, every time a pronoun would be called for. Needless to say, the statutes read like a document drawn up by a committee of pixilated schoolteachers.

AMBAGES  (AMBA'GES)   n.s.[Lat.]A circuit of words; a circumlocutory form of speech; a multiplicity of words; an indirect manner of expression.

In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few.

Doesn´t she have diarrhea of the mouth?

Strep. Tell me, O Socrates, I beseech you, by Jupiter, who are these that have uttered this grand song? Are they some heroines? Soc. By no means; but heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ability to hoax, and comprehension

To make a long story short, he went round and round—it helped like cupping helps a corpse.

We don't always have the words. But we can talk around things.

Henry James was our master of periphrasis -- the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of words.

And Lawrence was afraid of the main thing. He had a tendency to talk feverishly all around the main thing, as if bundling it with twine. Presumably if he talked in circles around the main thing for long enough it would lie there, vanquished, panting on its side, like a roped steer.

Where did you go? Around. The weather was good? Yeah. It didn't rain? Nope. That's good. Yeah. Talking like this is like throwing small, round stones __ nothing can be built from them, except perhaps the cairn of a lost conversation.