He that hath complex ideas without names for them, wants liberty and dispatch in his expressions, and is necessitated to use periphrases. From Wordnik.com. [An Essay Concerning Human Understanding] Reference
This feature of the song serves to explain its inordinate length, for a song may occupy the greater part of a night, apparently without tiring the audience by its verbose periphrases and its exuberant figures. From Wordnik.com. [The Manóbos of Mindanáo Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir] Reference
Thus, if we are writing about Charles II., it would be in very bad taste to avoid repeating "he" by using such periphrases as the following: "The third of the Stewarts hated business," "the Merry Monarch died in the fifty-fourth year of his age," &c. From Wordnik.com. [How to Write Clearly Rules and Exercises on English Composition] Reference
Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases?. From Wordnik.com. [Criticisms and Interpretations. I. By William Makepeace Thackeray] Reference
Therefore, he finds periphrases for the simplest expressions. From Wordnik.com. [Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 The Catholic Reaction] Reference
He abounded in periphrases as highly coloured as sacred pictures. From Wordnik.com. [Renée Mauperin] Reference
One man may even think the monosyllables in better taste than the periphrases. From Wordnik.com. [The Comedies of William Congreve Volume 1 [of 2]] Reference
And why engage in cumbersome periphrases, when a single word will neatly suffice?. From Wordnik.com. [VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 3] Reference
In ordinary conversation do not seek periphrases, subtleties, or figures of speech. From Wordnik.com. [George Washington's Rules of Civility]
It is true the word spirit is sometimes used in periphrases expressive of mental acts or states. From Wordnik.com. [A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians] Reference
Dans l'entretien ordinaire, n'allez point chercher de periphrases, point de subtilitez, ny de figures. From Wordnik.com. [George Washington's Rules of Civility]
There are endless flourishes and periphrases -- the colloquialisms which Swift and others had denounced. From Wordnik.com. [The English Novel] Reference
But Mr. Frazer has remarked that periphrases for sacred beasts, like 'Big Feet' for Bear, are not uncommon. From Wordnik.com. [Modern Mythology] Reference
Petrarchisti spinning cobwebs of old metaphors and obsolete periphrases, all felt in turn the touch of his light lash. From Wordnik.com. [Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 The Catholic Reaction] Reference
Northern periphrases, which make the sea the 'swan's bath,' gold, the 'dragon's hoard,' men, the 'ring-givers,' and so on. From Wordnik.com. [The Odyssey] Reference
The piece was written in the style of a tragic serial story: abstract phrases, bureaucratic epithets, academic periphrases. From Wordnik.com. [Jean Christophe: in Paris The Market-Place, Antoinette, the House] Reference
Sun and moon and so on are spoken of by their natural unmistakable names, or in equally unmistakable poetical periphrases, as in riddles. From Wordnik.com. [Modern Mythology] Reference
But the reason why Christianity uses these periphrases or metaphors, these euphemisms for death, is the opposite of the reason why the world uses them. From Wordnik.com. [Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V)] Reference
This sublime age reduces every thing to its quintessence: all periphrases and expletives are so much in disuse, that I suppose soon the only way of making love will be to say "Lie down.". From Wordnik.com. [The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 4] Reference
The philosophic pride of the eighteenth century was tickled by the use of general terms in description; the chosen periphrases are always more comprehensive than the names that they replace. From Wordnik.com. [Milton] Reference
Sylvia, receiving this into a sore and raw consciousness, said to herself with an embittered instinct for cynicism that she had never heard more euphonious periphrases for selling yourself for money. From Wordnik.com. [The Bent Twig] Reference
The simple, concrete phrases of daily speech had given way to stately periphrases; the rich and riotous vocabulary of earlier poetry had been replaced by one more decorous, measured, and high-sounding. From Wordnik.com. [Lady of the Lake] Reference
Now what I ask you to consider about these quotations is that in each the writer was using Jargon to shirk prose, palming off periphrases upon us when with a little trouble he could have gone straight to the point. From Wordnik.com. [V. Interlude: On Jargon] Reference
In some sense it is that: the writer whose percentage of Saxon words is high will generally be found to have fewer words that are out of the way, long, or abstract, and fewer periphrases, than another; and conversely. From Wordnik.com. [General.] Reference
His allusions and learned periphrases elucidate nothing; they put an idle labour on the reader who understands them, and extort from baffled ignorance, at which, perhaps, they are more especially aimed, a foolish admiration. From Wordnik.com. [Style] Reference
Hence our translations in verse, especially when rhymed, become for the most part deflorations or excerpts, adaptations or periphrases more or less meritorious and the "translator" was justly enough dubbed "traitor" by critics of the severer sort. From Wordnik.com. [The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus] Reference
So little does he himself conceive of any possible past or future life in his characters that he periphrases death into a disappearance from the page of history, as if they were bodiless and soulless creatures of pen and ink; mere names, not things. From Wordnik.com. [The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V Political Essays] Reference
(in reference to the historians Macaulayesque periphrases) etc. From Wordnik.com. [Beer and Cider] Reference
(a) Each of these periphrases must be condensed into a single adjective. From Wordnik.com. [How to Write Clearly Rules and Exercises on English Composition] Reference
He has a strong affection for ingenious periphrases (e.g. v. 139, vi. 159, x. 112, xii. From Wordnik.com. [Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal] Reference
This young man had a scorn of periphrases. From Wordnik.com. [Demos] Reference
A thousand periphrases to soften the expression. From Wordnik.com. [Hau Kiou Choaan] Reference
1624), with his exaltation of decoration as a principal quality of style and his admiration for magnificent periphrases. From Wordnik.com. [STYLE IN LITERATURE] Reference
"circumlocutions" periphrases. From Wordnik.com. [The Economist: Correspondent's diary] Reference
Regent eleven clear, clean, limpid, and genuine periphrases. From Wordnik.com. [Droll Stories — Volume 2] Reference
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