Had a preference for circumlocutious (or circumlocutory) rather than forthright expression.    From Wordnet, Princeton University. 

This was diffuse and circumlocutory, like the first.    From Wordnik.com.  [On the Stairs] Reference

Spontaneous speech is empty, circumlocutory, and paraphasic.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Neuropsychiatric Guide to Modern Everyday Psychiatry] Reference

It will require perhaps a little circumlocutory exposition to show this, but here it is.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Book-Hunter A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author] Reference

After one of their many agonising and circumlocutory "walks" Himmler turned to his aide and said.    From Wordnik.com.  [Barbarossa]

He began in the dithering, circumlocutory way that has become a part of the flavor of our business.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Space Merchants]

“I have the distinct pleasure …,” he began in his droll, circumlocutory, Austrian-sounding speech.    From Wordnik.com.  [Kipnis and Perel: A Literary Submission] Reference

What is uttered is vague and allusive (as in tangential speech), or around the point (circumlocutory speech).    From Wordnik.com.  [The Neuropsychiatric Guide to Modern Everyday Psychiatry] Reference

Kumpee's circumlocutory answer was no different than any hustler's grandiloquence about selling one thing or another real or imagined.    From Wordnik.com.  [Corpus of a Siam Mosquito] Reference

Which brings me, by a circumlocutory route to be sure, to some recent eruptions about yours truly by that petulant chihuahua Kathy Shaidle.    From Wordnik.com.  [Archive 2008-05-01] Reference

It ministers not only to his spiritual but to his material needs on earth, and it promises him in no circumlocutory terms salvation or damnation.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Woman's Impression of the Philippines] Reference

The challenge for the novice was to spot the bogus stuff, but Mikey deliberately made it harder by being coy and circumlocutory about genuine matters too.    From Wordnik.com.  [It's October, 1956.] Reference

The challenge for the novice was to spot the bogus stuff, but Mikey deliberately made it ha rder by being coy and circumlocutory about genuine matters too.    From Wordnik.com.  [Boiling a Frog]

The rest of us, who find her circumlocutory speech patterns as abrasive as nails on a blackboard, are doomed to a future of listening to her butcher the English language.    From Wordnik.com.  [CNN Transcript Dec 3, 2008] Reference

In physics things without motion are usually things without life; and in government it is the bureaus least disturbed by change that are most stagnated and most circumlocutory.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.] Reference

Herbert has a circumlocutory manner over the phone which irritates me.    From Wordnik.com.  [Sight Unseen] Reference

Commissioner Falconer in circumlocutory address, at once blurted out, 'Is.    From Wordnik.com.  [Tales and Novels — Volume 07] Reference

It expressed itself enigmatically; it was circumlocutory, sad, and mysterious.    From Wordnik.com.  [Wylder's Hand] Reference

"Thus then," continued the Reeve, "I will, with use of no verbiage circumlocutory, explain.".    From Wordnik.com.  [The Geste of Duke Jocelyn] Reference

After this and various other circumlocutory efforts and hints, he at last spoke more plainly.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Adventures of Hugh Trevor] Reference

The peer began with circumlocutory hints concerning the elopement -- 'An unaccountable affair!.    From Wordnik.com.  [Anna St. Ives] Reference

I am warm and abrupt, but I am dying, and have not time to be more courtly and circumlocutory.    From Wordnik.com.  [John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833] Reference

Certainly I was born under Cancer, and all my movements are circumlocutory, sideways, and crab-like.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Caxtons — Complete] Reference

Stammering becomes more eloquent than oratory, a child's impulsiveness wiser than circumlocutory experience.    From Wordnik.com.  [Albert Durer] Reference

He hears real discussion; he learns to pick men for higher work; and saves many hours of circumlocutory writing.    From Wordnik.com.  [Human Nature in Politics Third Edition] Reference

French in a slyly witty proverb, which is a circumlocutory way of saying that a man won't set the Thames on fire.    From Wordnik.com.  [Without Prejudice] Reference

"Shall I give you the circumlocutory account of the matter?" asked Horse Shoe, "or did you wish me to go into the particulars?".    From Wordnik.com.  [Horse-Shoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendency.] Reference

Long and circumlocutory terms are just as elegant in the mouth of a fashionable preacher as shorter and uglier words in the mouth of some one else.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Patient Observer And His Friends] Reference

No nation can afford to rest its knowledge of what is being accomplished in foreign laboratories to any great extent on the circumlocutory methods of translation.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Centennial of the University of Virginia, 1819-1921] Reference

From there, they clambered up the next step into the living room and continued their circumlocutory perambulations, indifferent to the routine movements of my family.    From Wordnik.com.  [newsday.co.tt] Reference

The astronomer seemed pleased with the proposal, and at once commenced a verbose and somewhat circumlocutory address, of which the following summary presents the main features.    From Wordnik.com.  [Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space] Reference

A Chinese servant is useful in preventing a circumlocutory habit of speech.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873] Reference

He was very circumlocutory.    From Wordnik.com.  [Just Asking: A Master Takes 'Dictation'] Reference

He began again, in his circumlocutory delicacy: "Never mind; help or no help, what th 'old farmer feels is -- and quite nat'ral.    From Wordnik.com.  [Rhoda Fleming — Complete] Reference

Kate,” are some of his titles; and again, in a more circumlocutory humour, “For the hands of the rich dame of Zuhlsdorf, Doctoress.    From Wordnik.com.  [Luther and Other Leaders of the Reformation] Reference

No circumlocutory phrase he seeks.    From Wordnik.com.  [Tales and Novels of J. de La Fontaine — Volume 17] Reference

circumlocutory, 50, 51t circumstantial, 49t, 306.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Neuropsychiatric Guide to Modern Everyday Psychiatry] Reference

Manneristic or stilted, scanning or explosive, vague and digressive, overelaborate or metaphorical, circumlocutory, aphasie.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Neuropsychiatric Guide to Modern Everyday Psychiatry] Reference