circumlocution

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
• 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.
• An instance of such usage; a roundabout expression, whether an inadvisable one or a necessary one.

Examples

• A technical word, such as hyperkalemia or hypoallergenic, can be glossed for general audiences with a circumlocution, such as "high potassium level" or "less likely to cause allergies" (respectively).

Synonyms

ambage, indirect expression, periphrasis, ambages

Related Words

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