ADJECTIVE
-
roundabout and unnecessarily wordy
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,/ Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle/ With words and meanings.
had a preference for circumlocutious (or circumlocutory) rather than forthright expression
How To Use circumlocutory In A Sentence
- Breakfast rooms across India display a vista of glazed eyes ploughing wearily through the turgid, circumlocutory language of the morning papers.
- The tautological, circumlocutory argument of American Exceptionalism can be stated thusly: “We are on a providentially inspired mission and are guided by a ‘Higher Power’, therefore whatever our actions or policies, we cannot be in the wrong.” American Exceptionalism
- After 20 years in the Senate, he has developed a meandering, circumlocutory speaking style.
- Other television station announcers had been less circumlocutory in declaring the result.
- Breakfast rooms across India display a vista of glazed eyes ploughing wearily through the turgid, circumlocutory language of the morning papers.
- “I have the distinct pleasure …,” he began in his droll, circumlocutory, Austrian-sounding speech. Kipnis and Perel: A Literary Submission
- His theories are often circumlocutory and warped.
- But when I came to praise a faux professor of circumlocutory nonsense had razed the image immaculate – leaving a specious burst of wretched toadying. Silence As Magnanimous Respect
- Which brings me, by a circumlocutory route to be sure, to some recent eruptions about yours truly by that petulant chihuahua Kathy Shaidle. Archive 2008-05-01
- 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. It's October, 1956.
