circumlocution

Meanings

Plural: circumlocutions

Noun

• a style that involves indirect ways of expressing things
• an indirect way of expressing something
• A roundabout or indirect way of speaking; thus:
• Unnecessary use of extra words to express an idea, such as a pleonastic phrase (sometimes driven by an attempt at emphatic clarity) or a wordy substitution (the latter driven by euphemistic intent, pedagogic intent, or sometimes loquaciousness alone).
• A roundabout or indirect way of speaking; thus:
• Necessary use of a phrase to circumvent either a vocabulary fault (of speaker or listener) or a lexical gap, either monolingually or in translation.
• A roundabout or indirect way of speaking; thus
• An instance of such usage; a roundabout expression, whether an inadvisable one or a necessary one.

Synonyms

ambage, ambages, indirect expression, periphrasis

Related Words

beat around the bush, equivocation, euphemism, evasive, go around the houses, hedge, mince matters, mince words, pleonasm, prevarication, waffle