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More "Circumlocution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perceived that this was meant for Miss Bentley, though it was spoken to herself; and Miss Bentley seemed to take the same view of the fact. She said: "We needn't use any circumlocution with Mrs. March, mother. She knows just how the affair stands. You can say whatever you wish, though I don't know why you should wish to say anything. You have made your own terms with us, and we are keeping them to the letter. What more can you ask? Do you want me to ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... his relative, General Mitchell, in Columbus, he was serenaded by the Hayes Club of the capital city, and, in response to their calls, foreshadowed the great issues of the approaching campaign. Without circumlocution, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... given. The ticket is an unintelligible tracery of lines, curves, dots and dashes, made by a brush dipped in India ink on a shred of flimsy Chinese paper. It may teem with abuse and ridicule, but you must pocket all that, and produce it on calling again, or your shirts and collars go into the Chinese Circumlocution Wash-house Office. It is very difficult getting one's clothes back if the ticket be lost—very. Hip Tee now dabs a duplicate of your ticket in a long book, and all is over. You will call on Saturday ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... they see, not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish minister makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have a council with them. The Indians all met me in council, as I had desired, and I then told them that the men who had taken part in shooting the woman would have to be delivered up for punishment. They were very stiff with me at the interview, and with all that talent for circumlocution and diplomacy with which the Indian is lifted, endeavored to evade my demands and delay any conclusion. But I was very positive, would hear of no compromise whatever, and demanded that my terms be at once complied with. No one was ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... The Log Cabin was the foundation of the Tribune, and thenceforth until his death Mr. Greeley was well known at the National Capital. He was a man of intense convictions and indomitable industry, and he wielded an incisive, ready pen, which went straight to the point without circumlocution or needless use of words. Although he was a somewhat erratic champion of Fourierism, vegetarianism, temperance, anti-hanging, and abolition, there was a "method in his madness," and his heretical views were evidently the honest ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... by means of words which are names of concrete objects—because' (p. 426)—'we have no other convenient and compact mode of speaking. Most attributes, and nearly all large bundles of attributes, have no names of their own. We can only name them by a circumlocution. We are accustomed to speak of attributes, not by names given to themselves, but by means of the names which they give to the objects they are attributes of.' 'All our ordinary judgments' (p. 428) 'are in Comprehension only; Extension not being thought of. But ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... desire was to escape the bother of personally superintending an insignificant account. His circumlocution was a suave way of stating that he had done all that could be expected of a neighbor and benevolent friend, and that the ordinary relation of broker and customer ought now be established. As for Littleton, he perceived ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... the terrible word of human destiny on their lips, the Final word, which the courts pronounce without emotion, but which the doctors, all of whose skill and learning it baffles, evade and seek to convey by circumlocution. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... finger how gently yet how powerfully on some inner place in the hearer's heart, and told him things about himself he had never known till then. Subtlest truths, which would have taken philosophers pages of circumlocution and big words to state, were dropped out by the way in a sentence or two of the most transparent Saxon." Of greater interest to the general reader are The Idea of a University, discourses delivered at Dublin, and his two works of fiction, Loss and Gain, treating of a man's conversion ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... to-day or to-morrow," Pink replied without any circumlocution whatever, while he fumbled in his coat pocket for the letter. "He says the Old Man wants to come, and the doctors think he might as well tackle it as stay there fussing over it. They're coming in a special car, and we've got to rig up an outfit to meet him. The Little Doctor ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... tongue, if it had been uttered in a softer tone, and if she had paid a little more attention to times and seasons: but she held it the sacred duty of sincerity to tell a friend her faults as soon as seen, and without circumlocution. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... as it did so, the whispers as rapidly changed into plain, open speech, and the words which were interchanged lost their original air of confidential mysteriousness, until, finally, people told each other without very much circumlocution that there was, in their opinion, more in the strange deaths of Tiahuana and Motahuana than met the eye. And if they were asked to express themselves more plainly they reminded each other that the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... and Passive, seems to be useless in Slavic; for their being active or passive has no influence upon their flexion; and the forms of the Latin Passive and Deponent must in Slavic be expressed by a circumlocution. A division of more importance and springing from the peculiarity of the language itself, is that into verbs Perfect and Imperfect. Neither the Greek, nor the Latin, nor the German, nor any of the languages derived from them, admits of a similar distinction. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... argued the point, but in vain. Brian would not even allow him to feel his pulse. But the doctor knew very well what was amiss, and told Mrs. Wendover, with delicate circumlocution, that her husband was suffering from an imprudent use of stimulants for some ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... mean, Captain Hazzard,—no, sir, der was no circumlocution ob de objec', in fac', sah, it ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... exceeding bitter cry: "We must strike them! We must never let them pass us again!" On the thirtieth he was horrified at getting from Beauregard (who was then between Richmond and Petersburg) a telegram which showed that the Confederate Government was busy with the circumlocution office in Richmond while the enemy was thundering at the gate. "War Department must determine when and what troops to order from here." Lee immediately answered: "If you cannot determine what troops you can spare, the Department cannot. The result of your delay will be disaster. Butler's troops ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... distinction. But as a name for one single opinion, not a set of opinions—to denote the recognition of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it—the term supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, a convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution.] ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... location, see Bailey, Johnson, Sheridan, Walker, &c. But if dictionaries are to be the arbiters of language, in which of them shall we find neologism? No matter. It is a good word, well sounding, obvious, and expresses an idea, which would otherwise require circumlocution. The reviewer was justifiable, therefore, in using it; although he noted at the same time, as unauthoritative, centrality, grade, sparse; all which have been long used in common speech and writing. I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... are here and there very sincere, capable people who are growing a bit weary of a multiplicity of commissions. They say—so cynical are they—that, in all ages and countries, the easiest method of evading or postponing a difficult problem has been to appoint a commission on it and thus prolong the circumlocution. ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... have been obliged to make use of circumlocution, to express the nature of the several substances which constitute our atmosphere, having provisionally used the terms of respirable and noxious, or non-respirable parts of the air. But the investigations I mean to undertake require a more direct mode ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... being much of a snap-shot at dialect; and his is an undefined, unclassifiable mixture. Eastern farm-hand and Western ranchman, prospector, who knows what? His real language is in his eye and his rare, pure smile. And just as his countenance expresses his thoughts without circumlocution or attempt at effect, so his body informs his clothing. Wind and rain have moulded his hat to his head, his shoes grip the ground like paws; his buckskins have a surface like a cast after Rodin. They are repousseed by the hard bones and sinews ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... beliefs, and there are hot and live ones; and when one grows hot and alive within us, everything has to re-crystallize about it. We may say that the heat and liveliness mean only the "motor efficacy," long deferred but now operative, of the idea; but such talk itself is only circumlocution, for whence the sudden motor efficacy? And our explanations then get so vague and general that one realizes all the more the intense individuality of the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... proceeds from faith unfeigned. So then, we must go up in our searching from external obedience all alongst, till we arrive at the inward fountain of Christ dwelling in us by faith, and then have ye found true religion indeed. Now, ye may think possibly, we have used too much circumlocution: what is all this to the present purpose? Yes, very much. Ye shall find the Lord rejecting this people's public worship and solemn ordinances upon these three grounds,—either they did not join with them the observation of weightier ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... distrust his aunt had put into his mind to be seen; in fact, he considered it insulting. To avoid even a slight jar with a person so imposing to his mind as his future mother-in-law, he proceeded to state his intentions with the circumlocution natural to persons who ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... trees and plants, of which there is every variety capable of English cultivation. Positively, the Garden of Eden cannot have been more beautiful than this private garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred acres, and by the artful circumlocution of the paths, and the undulations, and the skilfully interposed clumps of trees, is made to appear limitless. The sylvan delights of a whole country are compressed into this space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to the concoction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... feel no other love than that which he cherishes for his own worthy person, and the purses of all others. Let him explain now, quickly and without circumlocution, if he really wishes my pardon, why, after going to Nurnberg to marry a bag of gold, containing a few millions, he has now returned ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... illiterate though it was, the letter had a certain noble simplicity. "Tres gentil," I remarked as I returned it to Jeanne, and thought the matter at an end. But Jeanne had not done, and, with much circumlocution and many hesitations, she at last preferred a simple request. I was going to visit the battlefield of the Marne—yes? I assented. Well, perhaps, perhaps Monsieur would visit Paul's grave, and perhaps if he found it he would take ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... this truthfulness of John. The first is its straightforwardness, the second is its unconsciousness, and the last its unselfishness. The straightforwardness is remarkable in this circumstance, that there is no indirect coming to the point. At once, without circumlocution, the true man speaks. "It is not lawful for thee to have her." There are some men whom God has gifted with a rare simplicity of heart, which make them utterly incapable of pursuing the subtle excuses which can be made for evil. There is in ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... shabby one-horse-brougham stopped at Mr. Morley's door. She asked to see Mrs. Morley, and through her had an interview with her husband. Without circumlocution, she told him that if he would lay his affairs before her and a certain accountant she named, to use their judgment regarding them in the hope of finding it possible to serve him, they would wait upon him for that purpose at any time and place he pleased. Mr. Morley ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... satire on Sudbury or a satire on Ipswich; he meant it as a satire on England. The Eatanswill election is not a joke against Eatanswill; it is a joke against elections. If the satire is merely local, it practically loses its point; just as the "Circumlocution Office" would lose its point if it were not supposed to be a true sketch of all Government offices; just as the Lord Chancellor in "Bleak House" would lose his point if he were not supposed to be symbolic and representative of all Lord Chancellors. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... the manly, rude, coarse language of our ancestors. The age in which are fabricated such fine, such brilliant stuffs, such elegant furniture, and when are made such rich porcelains, must needs be the age of periphrase and circumlocution. We must try, therefore, to coin a new word in place of the comic expression which Moliere used; since the language of this great man, as a contemporary author has said, is too free for ladies who find gauze too thick ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... thinly fluting voice, with a preciseness of enunciation akin to the more feebly clerical, and with smiles which became almost lachrymose in their expressiveness as he dropped from phrase to phrase of embarrassed circumlocution. And his long bony hands writhed together till ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Tongue, as I am perswaded, deliver a Matter with more Variety than ours, both plainly, and by Proverbes and Metaphors: for example, when we would be rid of one, we use to say, Be going, trudge, packe, bee faring hence, away shift; and by Circumlocution, Rather your Roome than your Companie, lets see your backe, come againe when I bid you, when you are called, sent for, intreated, willed, desired, invited; spare us your place, another in your stead, a ship of salt for you, save your credite, you are next the ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... without the smallest circumlocution. His voice was low, in keeping with the scene, but the words dropped with a sharp distinctness into the other's heart like grains of sand that pricked the skin before they smothered him. Caution they ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... a great school for the study of life's broader philosophies and humors: philosophies that avoid vague circumlocution and aim at direct and sure results; humors of the rugged and vigorous sort that in Europe are known as "American" and in America are known as "Western." Let us be thankful that Mark Twain's school was no less ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... majesty's disease under the appellation of a cutaneous eruption, chicken-pox, etc., etc., none daring to give it its true denomination. Bordeu and Lemonnier pursued this cautious plan, but La Martiniere, who had first of all pronounced his decision on the subject, impatient of so much circumlocution on the part of those around him, could no longer repress his indignation. "How is this, gentlemen!" exclaimed he, "is science at a standstill with you? Surely, you cannot be in any doubt on the subject of the king's illness. His majesty has the small-pox, with a complication ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to the ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... Then Jim, not without circumlocution and many hideous oaths, detailed in his hearer's willing ears the scheme he had in view. He proposed, with Mr. Ryfe's assistance, to accomplish no less flagrant an outrage than the forcible abduction of Lady Bearwarden from her home. He suggested that his listener, of whose skill in ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... behind them. It is true that the drinking of wine is forbidden by the tenets of their religion; but in respect of champagne, they understand how to evade this commandment by christening it by the harmless name of "sparkling lemonade," a circumlocution which of course did not in the slightest counteract its exhilarating effects. The Indians who were less proof against the effects of alcohol were much more quickly intoxicated than their new European friends; and under the influence of the potent liquor ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... obliged to distinguish by elaborate circumlocution between a man's place of residence and that larger and truer life,—his sphere of sympathies. Emerson lived in Concord, Carlyle in Chelsea; to the casual reader these phrases convey the impression that the life of Emerson ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... the Mpongwe dialects is as follows: "The Mpongwes have a great partiality for the use of the passive voice, and avoid the active when the passive can be used. The Bakele verb delights in the active voice, and will avoid the passive even by a considerable circumlocution. The Benga takes an intermediate position in this respect, and uses the active and passive very much as we ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... wilderness of peaks which lay to the south and through which only the dogged sheepmen could fight their way, stealthily hidden, yet watching, lay Jasper Swope and his sheep. And not only Jasper with his pet man-killing Chihuahuano and all those low-browed compadres whom he called by circumlocution "brothers," but Jim, sore with his defeat, and ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... beg you also to send a few lines to Kurnberger to tell him that I have given you his manuscript? It would be discourteous if I were to leave him without any answer, and, as I cannot say anything further to him, we should save useless circumlocution if you would be so good as to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... lazily, in the formula of the country. His tone was not enthusiastic. Purvis was so prone to circumlocution that the fact that he had asked deliberately to accompany him on the ride towards the mail in the cool of the evening convinced him that the man could have nothing ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... was not disappointed. The milliner sent the costume ordered, but wrote to inform Miss Graham, with all due circumlocution and politeness, that, unless her long-standing account were quickly settled, legal proceedings must be taken. Lydia threw the letter aside with a frown, and proceeded to inspect her dress, which was perfect in ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... expression, set phrase; sentence, paragraph; figure of speech &c 521; idiom, idiotism^; turn of expression; style. paraphrase &c (synonym) 522; periphrase &c (circumlocution) 573; motto &c (proverb) 496 [Obs.]. phraseology &c 569. V. express, phrase; word, word it; give words to, give expression to; voice; arrange in words, clothe in words, put into words, express by words; couch in terms; find words to express; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... circumlocution of legal phraseology. Suffice it to say, that there were several counts ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... in particular, and lawyers in general, they are too accustomed to circumlocution to expose themselves to the danger your kind heart apprehends; but I allow that a shy scholar like myself, or a grave college tutor, might be a little put to the blush, if he were to blurt forth inadvertently ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... laughed Peter. "I'm to be admitted to practise next year. Meanwhile, circumlocution's ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... lower corridor he ran across the President, who was looking for him. With much courtesy and circumlocution he was told the thing he had been waiting to hear: the board, likewise, had discovered that Saint Margaret's had suddenly grown too small to hold both the Senior Surgeon and himself. Strangely enough, this troubled him little; there are times in a man's life ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... excuse my sea manners. I should have used more circumlocution, but they don't put much ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... your thirst always requires large quantities," exclaimed Thugut, laughing. "But speak now rapidly, briefly, and plainly. No circumlocution, no tirades! Tell me the naked truth. What fun ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... positive-minded lady, unheeding and scarcely hearing Mr. Burleigh's dubious circumlocution, and she put her finger to her forehead for a moment in an affected stage-like manner, as if her ideas of the "eternal fitness of things" had been obtained from the sensational drama. "I have it: ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... message correctly, and his wife went the next day to Andrew's, as usual; and, seating herself by his bedside, said, without circumlocution, "I have something to say to you, Andrew. Are you ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... Of course, of course! If we could only thrive on casual flattery! But praise won't raise a troop of foot or horse, Equip a squadron, Sir, or mount a battery. Soft words won't butter parsnips—that's plain speech. Circumlocution is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... to be refuted, in each particular case, before the production of living matter in any other way could be admitted by careful reasoners. It will be necessary for me to refer to this hypothesis so frequently, that, to save circumlocution, I shall call it the hypothesis of Biogenesis; and I shall term the contrary doctrine—that living matter may be produced by not ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... as a matter of course; that goes without saying. Whatever you care to tell me about your son will be mentioned to no one. Pray proceed, without further circumlocution, for my ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... a good deal what she would say, how she would accede, and then he perceived that her dignity knew no circumlocution. 'I will send the man for your horse.' She said it ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... have. Without circumlocution I now proceed to instant elocution: My charming mistress sent me here to beg You'll trust her with your secret. Her last leg She's standing on; and in sheer desperation She'll marry you; but must before ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... value. Now, it is very possible, that a child might, on the contrary, learn all the properties, and the various uses of gold, without having learned its name; his ideas of this metal would be perfectly distinct; but whenever he wished to speak of gold, he would be obliged to use a vast deal of circumlocution to make himself understood; and if he were to enumerate all the properties of the metal every time he wanted to recal the general idea, his conversation would be intolerably tedious to others, and to himself ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... that practical Christianity which is at the bottom of Dickens' influence. It is bonhomie and something more. It is not Dickens the reformer, as we get him when he satirizes Dotheboys hall, or the Circumlocution Office or the Chancery Court: but Dickens as Mr. Greatheart, one with all that is good, tender, sweet and true. Tiny Tim's thousand-times quoted saying is the quintessence, the motto for it all and the writer speaks in and through the lad when he says: "God bless ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... swore at this circumlocution: the thing could be done as well in a week as in a year; and the veterans, who, for a miracle, had agreed in their rival stations, and in doubtful moments of success, were near splitting on the point of ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... cleared and cheroots produced, without any circumlocution or preface, Shafto plunged into his subject and laid his information and suspicions before his friend who, to his ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Clotilde had arrived the evening before, with an old aunt, to remain for the whole spring! Monsieur de Langevy, who was not addicted to circumlocution in his mode of talk, told his son point-blank, that his cousin was a pretty girl, and what was more, a considerable heiress—so that it was his duty—his, Hector de Langevy—the owner of a great name and a very small fortune, to marry the said cousin—or if not, he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... form. The form moved corresponds in meaning not with [Greek: tetupha] and momordi, but with [Greek: etupsa] and vixi. Its sense is that of [Greek: etupsa], and not that of [Greek: tetupha]. The notion given by [Greek: tetupha] we express by the circumlocution I have beaten. We have no such form as bebeat or memove. In the Moeso-Gothic, however, there was a true reduplicate form; in other words, a perfect tense as well as an aorist. It is by the possession of this form that the verbs of the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... appointed place and time, I find a crowd of several hundred people gathered to satisfy their curiosity as to what sort of a looking individual it is who has crossed America awheel, and furthermore proposes to accomplish the greater feat of the circumlocution of the globe. A small sea of hats is enthusiastically waved aloft; a ripple of applause escapes from five hundred English throats as I mount my glistening bicycle; and, with the assistance of a few ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... are you!' was on Dixon's lips, but he did not utter it, because he wanted to propitiate him; and after some more circumlocution, Guy succeeded in discovering that he had been gambling, and had lost an amount which, unless he could obtain immediate assistance, would become known, and lead to the loss of his character and situation. Guy ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The Archbishop with much circumlocution told her of the difficulty in which the King's Council was placed, and would have discoursed for long upon the situation, only that in his first pause the Maid spoke, addressing herself ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is, naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... thrown off balance by a strategy of ironical indirection. Sometimes this took the form of omission or the presentation of an argument in so fragmentary or slanted a fashion that Collins's "Enemies" could debate neither his implications nor his conclusions. At other times he used this artful circumlocution to create his favorite mask, that of the pious Christian devoted to scripture or of the moralist perplexed by the divisions among the orthodox clergy. Finally, his rhetoric was shaped by deistic predecessors who used sarcasm ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... 'I wish to be fair. I cannot express my idea of the meaning of transcendentalism without tedious circumlocution, and I begin to despair of proving my position by quotations. It is not on any particular passage that I rest my case. You have read this work, and will understand me when I say that it is to its ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... literary form. France went to ruin in spite of this array of documents; dissertations stood in place of action; a million of reports were written every year; bureaucracy was enthroned! Records, statistics, documents, failing which France would have been ruined, circumlocution, without which there could be no advance, increased, multiplied, and grew majestic. From that day forth bureaucracy used to its own profit the mistrust that stands between receipts and expenditures; ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... proceed to the investigation of the laws by which the excitability is acted on; but I must first define some terms which it will be necessary to use, to avoid circumlocution, and at the same time to give us more distinct ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... only of private reports, and confidential and anonymous notes. The hatred of the revolution pervaded every line, every word. The writers did not dare to propose plainly the revocation of the Charter, and the abolition of the new institutions; but they declared without any circumlocution, that the dynasty of the Bourbons would never be secure with the existing laws; and that it was necessary, to distrust and get rid of the men of the revolution. More effectually to know and persecute these, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... person of few words, and will therefore state without circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent. I speak Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I might easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of which ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... to caterpillars could do so without any exercise of his ingenuity by simply introducing the word 'caterpillars,' whereas the classical poet had to prove that he was a scholar and a gentleman by inventing some circumlocution, such as 'the crawling scourge that smites the leafy plain.'. . . In the generation that succeeded Pope really clever writers spoke of a 'gelid cistern,' when they meant a cold bath, and 'the loud hunter-crew' when they ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ceremony, as he had already become an object of suspicion to them. From that day gloomy forebodings of disaster grew ever more prevalent on every side. People even went so far as to say, with little attempt at circumlocution, that the execution of Blum had been an act of friendship on the part of the Archduchess Sophia to her sister, the Queen of Saxony, for during his agitation in Leipzig the man had made himself both hated and feared. Troops of Viennese fugitives, disguised as members of the student bands, began ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Voiture, and all other dealers in the fireworks of gallantry jealous; and at the end of the dinner, Mademoiselle Laure, having learned that he was a poet, gave him clearly to understand that she was not indisposed to accept him as her Petrarch. She even, without circumlocution, made an appointment with him ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... into motion. But alike in both cases, on the nature of that transmutation, the very thing we most desire to know, we get no light. In regard to this crucial point no one, materialist or idealist, can offer a suggestion. We may of course, in fault of explanation, restate the facts in clumsy circumlocution. Calling thought a kind of motion, we may say that in action it propagates itself from the mind through the brain into the outer world; while in the apprehension of an idea motions of the outer world pass into the brain, and there set up those motions which we ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... a Sunday paper they are seldom long. Rachel was soon through the first, her blood boiling; the second she could not finish for her tears; the third dried her eyes with the fires of fierce resentment. It was not so much what they said; it was what they were obviously afraid to say. It was their circumlocution, their innuendo, their mild surprise, their perfunctory congratulations, their assumption of chivalry and their lack of its essence, that wounded and stung the subject of these effusions. As she raised her flushed face from the last of them, Mr. Steel stood before ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... appropriate to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz., giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... cease to serve you; and you would no longer be enthusiastic on the subject of Austrian dominion, if Austria's money should cease to flow into your coffers. And now, my dear count, I believe we understand each other; and, without further circumlocution, what do you require of me—what ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... poor priest more and more with every fresh word I said to him. The idea of a dueling-party and a dead man seemed to scare him out of his senses. He bowed, fidgeted, cast his eyes up to heaven, and piteously shrugging his shoulders, told me, with rapid Italian circumlocution, that he had not the faintest idea of what I was talking about. This was my first failure. I confess I was weak enough to feel a little dispirited when I ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Minister was looking over his tortoiseshell. spectacles at somebody behind him, Mr. Lavender turned and went out. In the corridor he thought, "What terseness! How different from the days when Dickens wrote his 'Circumlocution Office'! Punch!" And opening the wrong door, he found himself in the presence of six little girls in brown frocks, sitting against the walls with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... minutes sufficed to bring him to the cottage of the old lady, and her voice in very friendly tenor commanded him to enter. Without useless circumlocution, yet without bluntness, the old man broached the subject; and, without urging any of the isolated facts of which he was possessed, and by which his suspicions were awakened, he dwelt simply upon ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... our patrols had brought in a host of Republican cattle; and when almost simultaneously with this announcement two proclamations were issued from Lennox Street, it was more than hoped, it was assumed, that the meat ordinance was to be relaxed. But it was not so. The first of these monuments to circumlocution had a final rap at the canteen. There were a few bars and canteens outside the barriers of the town; the Colonel said they should be closed, and closed they were—the proprietors, strange to say, assenting with a will. This alacrity ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... division of the colony into North and South—and the Clarion had warned the "inert and muddling Government" of the colony "that unless the just and courteous request of the telegraphic staff of the Bowen Repeating Office for a punkah is acceded to without further circumlocution, the growing movement in favour of Separation will be openly advocated by this journal. Already (of this we have private knowledge) has Lord Kimberley expressed himself astonished at the heartless refusal of our ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... am consider'ble ob a story, Massa Jack, de circumlocution ob which would take a heap ob time tellin'," he began soberly. "But it happened 'bout dis away. When de Yankees come snoopin' long de East Sho'—I reck'n maybe it des a yeah after dat time when we done buried de ol' Co'nel—dey burned Missus Caton's house clah to de groun'; de ol' Missus was ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... judgment of his friend. For this purpose he sent it to Spalatin, requesting him to forward it. Then, on December 1, he wrote a letter to Albert himself. Its tone and contents indicate pretty plainly what the pamphlet itself contained. In clear vigorous German, and without any circumlocution, he submits to the Cardinal his 'humble request,' to abstain from corrupting the poor people, and not to show himself a wolf in bishop's clothing. He must surely know by this time that indulgences were ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... grotesque and malicious. One day they arrived, attended by a Gypsy jockey whom I had never previously seen. We had scarcely been seated a minute, when this fellow, rising, took me to the window, and without any preamble or circumlocution, said - 'Don Jorge, you shall lend me two barias' (ounces of gold). 'Not to your whole race, my excellent friend,' said I; 'are you frantic? Sit down and be discreet.' He obeyed me literally, sat down, and when the rest departed, followed with them. We did not invariably ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... lost dignity, and the whole people be gathered unto one body." But this explanation must be rejected on philological grounds. [Hebrew: mmlkt] is status constr.; the [Hebrew: l] serves, therefore, only as a circumlocution of the genitive; and it is not admissible to supply the Verb Substant. To this, moreover, there must be added the reference [Pg 464] to what precedes. The dominion over the daughter of Jerusalem is to come to the tower which commands the daughter of Zion, not, by any means, to ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... were rather tame, about which I did not trouble myself. I was told that all was known, and this amused me as I was aware that nothing was known. The marquis's mistress took hold of my arm, and told me, without any circumlocution, that I had the reputation of being inconstant, and by way of reply I observed politely that I was wrongfully accused, but that if there was any ground for the remark it was because I had never served so sweet a lady as herself. She was flattered by my compliment, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the affair leaked out, but the whole thing was known in the village before a week had passed, with the result that fifteen women visited the vicar, one after the other, and after much circumlocution intimated that "If so be as 'e would be so kind, they'd be glad if 'e'd 'int to the ladies as they 'adn't nearly wore out last Christmas petticoat, and, if it were true wot they'd 'eard as they was talkin' of givin' summat different, might Mrs Mustoe, Gegg, Uzzel, or Radway, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... I walked across to Mrs. Evelegh's desk, and began writing a letter. It occurred to me that Mr. Hitchcock, who was a man of business, might be able to help a woman of business in this delicate matter. I put the point to him fairly and squarely, without circumlocution; we were going to start an English typewriting office in Florence; what was the ordinary way for people to become possessed of a typewriting machine, without the odious and mercenary preliminary of paying for it? The answer ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... extract from Mr. Bishopriggs any clearer description of the man who had been with Anne at the inn than this, Blanche approached the main object of the interview. Too anxious to waste time in circumlocution, she turned the conversation at once to the delicate and doubtful subject ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... sake of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of Tuscan hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without circumlocution what does not appear upon the time-tables of the line from Empoli to Rome. Montepulciano has a station; but this railway station is at the distance of at least an hour and a half's drive from the mountain upon which the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... thence resulted to the peace of Europe, and the name of Napoleon II. as a possible and perhaps the best solution of the problems involved in our future. All this was expressed in guarded but sufficiently definite terms, equally without passion or circumlocution, and with a marked intention of ascertaining to what extent I should admit or reject the prospects on which he enlarged. I was unprepared, both for the visit and the conversation; but I stood on no reserve, not expecting to convert M. Manuel to my own ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... been in pursuit of me—viz., the Powhattan, the Niagara, the San Jacinto, the Iroquois, the Keystone State, and the Richmond—the Ino and the Dacotah are also employed in this fruitless business. We are fairly in the hands of the circumlocution office. I suppose they are telegraphing Madrid. The greatest excitement prevails all over Europe to learn the result of the English demand for the Commissioners. The general impression is, that the Yankees will give them up, and that there will be no ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... continued to thump and shake, demanding instant admission and inquiring if they were going to let the audience pull the house down. Another round of applause had broken out, directed perceptibly to some apology, some solemn circumlocution, of Selah Tarrant's; this covered the sound of the agent's voice, as well as that of a confused and divided response, proceeding from the parlour. For a minute nothing definite was audible; the door remained closed, and Matthias Pardon ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... Stanton on the Richardson-McFarland case, I feel disinclined to be associated with her in editorial work. I want to say this very gently; but I have no time for circumlocution.... ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... these rules. We must try to preserve the happy medium, for there is such a thing as being too systematic. There are men and women, for instance, who put away things so carefully that they can never find them again. It is too much like the "red-tape" formality at Washington, and Mr. Dick-ens' "Circumlocution Office,"—all theory and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... day, into the smoking-room, and there, with much tact and circumlocution, gave him to understand that she thought Hadria was becoming more sensible; that she was growing more like other people, less opinionated, wiser, and better ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... entered into a long wrangle with the administration on the constitutional points involved. He denied the right of Congress to pass such an act, and of the Executive to carry it out within the limits of a sovereign state; averred—with much circumlocution and turgid bombast—that such attempt would be an infringement of the State Rights of Georgia, which ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... means; but heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... there is such a thing as being too systematic. There are men and women, for instance, who put away things so carefully that they can never find them again. It is too much like the "red tape" formality at Washington, and Mr. Dickens' "Circumlocution Office,"—all theory and ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... the mind only, and ere she had opened her lips to detail them and engage me in her cause, I had vowed, heart and soul, to be her champion. Having complimented me upon the high character she had heard of my prowess, understanding, and principles, she informed me, with little circumlocution, that various unhappy family circumstances had rendered it necessary for her to seek friends amongst strangers; that she was a novice of the Convent of St. Anne, but on the eve of profession, and that having long been under an engagement ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... committed for trial on the charge of murder. His best witness, Granfer, who had seen and spoken with him in the village at the moment of the alleged murder, greatly discredited his evidence by his circumlocution and stupidity, purposely affected to set the court in a roar. He admitted that Everard gave him money and tobacco. Judkins swore that at three o'clock Lee told him Everard had asked Alma to meet him at dusk that evening in the wood, and that he—Lee—meant ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... comparative, and apuedi for the diminutive. Ubura, from the verb uburau to be before in time, and adiki, from adikin to be after in time, are also used for the same purpose. The superlative has to be expressed by a circumlocution; as tumaqua aditu ipirrun turreha, what is great beyond all else; bokkia uessa dauria, thou art better than I, where the last word is a compound of dai uwuria of, from, than. The comparative degree of the adjectives corresponds to the intensive and ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... to New York, he wrote three pamphlets which were marvels of circumlocution, as far as reform was concerned, and masterpieces of political writing, as far as his own interests were concerned. He had borrowed freely, and without credit, from the speeches of every orator from ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... unusual visitor. It was a leader of the workingmen of Altona, who told him, without further circumlocution, that the Socialists had kept their eye upon him, had found out where he was living, and now sent him, the Altona man, to see if anything could ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... prose, but he is blemished with the weakness of his predecessor. Rhyme (for I will deal clearly) has somewhat of the usurper in him; but he is brave and generous, and his dominion pleasing."[52] To the objection that the difficulties of rhyme will lead to circumlocution, he answers in substance, that a good poet will know how to ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... getting it done is diminished and it grows less if you enlarge your committee. By the time you have got a group of committees, independent of one another and working at cross purposes, you have got Dickens's famous Circumlocution Office, where the great object in life was "how not to ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... thinking that in view of his having received special permission for his departure from the Governor, it could not apply to his individual case. From this false security, however, he was suddenly awakened one morning by the appearance of a detachment of gendarmerie, who, without any circumlocution, presented him with a copy of the order, and informed him that, as he had been found out of the limits, he was included in the number of those to whom the decrees applied, and that their orders were to carry the ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Sir! in worthless phrases, 125 A sedulous eschewer of the popular And the colloquial—one who seeketh dignity I' th' paths of circumlocution! It would have Surpris'd you tho', to hear how nat'rally He squeak'd when Curio had him ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in it." What little portable wisdom was given to him in the first Act is soon withdrawn—he stammers in his deceit, and the old indirectness having no material of thought to work upon becomes a circumlocution of truisms. As the play proceeds he is made, as if with a second intention, more and more the antithesis, as he is the antipathy, of the prince. It is the careful portrait of what Hamlet would hate—a remnant of senile craft in the method with folly in the matter—a shy look in the dull ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... to a great extent evaporated. Bronchitis was not of the ailments which spring from a broken heart, and she was inclined to hold it as a grievance against him that she had been so wastefully touched with pity. Her sympathy disappeared altogether when with little circumlocution he broached the subject of the Boruwimi expedition, and dropped a mention of Mrs. Willoughby's relative. There was something at the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... it," replied Nowell, "because it will save circumlocution, which I dislike; and therefore, before proceeding further, I must tell you, directly and distinctly, that if there be aught of witchcraft in what you are about to propose to me, I will have nought to do with it, and our conference may as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... certain unbelievers compel a man to wind about a tale, swaddling clothes about an infant when it should run about stark naked. May the great devil give them a clyster with his red-hot three-pronged fork. I am going on with my story now without further circumlocution. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... as they met, with a countenance partaking of anger as well as sorrow; and, without much circumlocution, proceeded to state his business, and interceded most warmly in behalf of his men in confinement. But the old Don, before whose mind visions of promotion and honors were floating, was in no humor to grant petitions of any kind, much less one, the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... of choosing the shortest methods in every piece of work to be accomplished. Equally important is it to cultivate economy of speech, or the habit of condensing instructions to assistants, and answers to inquiries into the fewest words. A library should never be a circumlocution office. The faculty of condensed expression, though somewhat rare, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... possible. I will not deny that I fear you have made a mistake and honoured my poor house by inadvertence; for, to speak openly, I cannot at all remember your appearance. Let me put the question without unnecessary circumlocution - between gentlemen of honour a word will suffice - Under whose roof do you suppose ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... puckered with wrinkles, through anxiety to make these markings legible and intelligible. The popular newspaper, the popular member of Parliament, and the popular novelist,—the name of Charles Dickens will of course present itself to the reader who remembers the Circumlocution office,—have had it impressed on their several minds,—and have endeavoured to impress the same idea on the minds of the public generally,—that the normal Government clerk is quite indifferent to his work. No greater mistake was ever made, or one showing less observation of human nature. It ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... says my letter must be short, so I smother what remnant of modesty I have, covering nothing with the veil of circumlocution, but telling you plainly what I know you want to hear. I love only you and am true to you in every thought, word, and deed. I long for you, yearn for you, pray for you, and be your fortune good or ill, I would share it and give you a part of the ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... exchanged; and that, whoever the other party was, I am convinced the Government got the best of the bargain. But long before this occurred, I had fulfilled my promise to Robert; for as soon as my patient recovered strength of memory enough to make his answer trustworthy, I asked, without any circumlocution,— ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... rid of more cargo. Come, good woman," turning to Biddy, with whom he did not think it worth his while to use much circumlocution, "your turn is next. It's the maid's duty to follow ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... N. phrase, expression, set phrase; sentence, paragraph; figure of speech &c. 521; idiom, idiotism[obs3]; turn of expression; style. paraphrase &c. (synonym) 522; periphrase &c. (circumlocution) 573 motto &c. (proverb) 496[obs3]. phraseology &c. 569. V. express, phrase; word, word it; give words to, give expression to; voice; arrange in words, clothe in words, put into words, express by words; couch in terms; find words to express; speak by the card; call, denominate, designate, dub. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... possessors of the same degree, the Grand Lodge of England has long since distinguished them as "virtual" and as "actual" Past Masters. The terms are sufficiently explicit, and have the advantage of enabling us to avoid circumlocution, and ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... affording every facility for merit to rise from the ranks, embodied in measures against promotion by Purchase; his advocacy of State-aided Emigration, of administrative and civil service Reform,—the abolition of "the circumlocution office" in Downing Street,—of the institution of a Minister of Education; his dwelling on the duties as well as the rights of landowners,—the theme of so many Land Acts; his enlarging on the superintendence of labour,—made ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... to execute my plans for obtaining a decent livelihood, as I could not think of burdening Thomas and Martha any longer, loath as they were for me to leave them. Some pleasant weeks, I say, had thus glided away, when Mr Budge, with much ceremony and circumlocution, as if he had deeply pondered the matter, and considered it very weighty and important, made a communication which materially changed and brightened my prospects. It was to the effect, that an intimate friend of his, whom he had known, he said, all his life, required the immediate services ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... know, and even somewhat absurd that a man should go about armed like that? Carr evaded and made a vague remark about a man riding across the Bad Lands perhaps with money in his pocket. But John Carr was a blunt, straightforward type of a man, little given to finesse in circumlocution, and Helen fixed her frank, level gaze upon him and knew that he was holding back something. Still higher rose her curiosity about a man whom she did her feminine best ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... emancipation, drawn by Benjamin Franklin, the great leader on this question, approved by the Quakers, and adopted by Pennsylvania in 1780, liberated all the descendants of slaves born after that date within the limits of the State. To avoid circumlocution, I shall call those born before the date of emancipating laws the ante nati, and those born after the date of such laws, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... intermediate between the two, partaking of the definiteness of the outer and of the universality of the inner world. For logic teaches us that every word is really a universal, and only condescends by the help of position or circumlocution to become the expression of individuals or particulars. And sometimes by using words as symbols we are able to give a 'local habitation and a name' ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... other than, firstly, a defunct sister to the party claiming the whole residue: and secondly, Mr Gilbert Hodgon, his servant. Nay, sir," said the pertinacious lawyer, rising, "I do not wish to use more circumlocution than is necessary; I have stated my suspicions, and if you are an honest man, you can have no objections, at least, to satisfy your nephew on the subject, who seems, to say the truth, much astonished ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... one "fears" that one has stepped aside from the narrow path of duty, when one knows perfectly well that one has done so, is a ridiculous half-dodging of the truth; let me dismiss from my service such a cowardly circumlocution, and squarely say that I neglected the Cowpens during certain days which now followed. Nay, more; I totally deserted them. Although I feel quite sure that to discover one is a real king's descendant must bring an exultation of no mean order to the heart, there's no exultation whatever ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving HOW NOT TO ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of words and phrases is that which is termed circumlocution, a going around the bush when there is no occasion for it,—save ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... purporting to be drawn up by himself, and extending over the eventful years of 1830-35 'King William's style,' says the uncourtly biographer, "abounds to overflowing in what is called in England Parliamentary circumlocution, in which, instead of direct, simple expressions, bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the end intolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a foreigner to despair." The style is indeed august; but the real penman is not the King, whose strong point was not grammatical ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... "Sure thing" by an appropriate circumlocution, and then he thundered back: "How in—nature—is a young writer to forecast the demands of current editors? If an editor is worth his salt—his Attic salt—he does not know himself what he wants, except by the eternal yearning of the editorial soul for something new and good. If he has any other ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the use of compliment and circumlocution; and until I concluded, their looks of mild perplexity showed that neither Zulve nor her husband caught my purpose. I fancied—for, not daring to look them in the face, I had turned my downcast glance on Eveena—that she had perhaps somewhat sooner divined the object of my thoughts. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... of the people, I answered these interrogatories by propounding the question, who the gentleman was to whom I had the honour of addressing myself, and under what authority I was considered amenable to his inquisition. "Answer my enquiries, Sir," he replied, "without the impertinency of idle circumlocution, otherwise I shall consider you as a spy, and my provost-marshal shall instantly perform on your person the duties of his office!" I now resorted to my letters; I had no other alternative between existence and annihilation. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Writing home he playfully alludes to a ridiculous report that was being circulated, that he intended to throw off allegiance to Egypt, and set up as an independent Sultan, similar to what the American adventurer, Burgevine, proposed to do in China. "The Khedive said, after some circumlocution, 'Was I not too friendly with Johannis?' In fact, the general report in Cairo was that I was going in for being Sultan; but it would not suit our family. I hope to finish off Johannis soon, and then to come home." There seem to have been some other ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... The circumlocution and indefiniteness of this letter led me to infer that there was something behind it which the writer had not stated. It soon appeared that my friend agreed with me in this inference. I could not but smile at the coolness with which he quoted the common ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... whole nervous system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's lives. They would be happier if he were dead. They could easier do without his services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily hag-ridden ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proceed to the investigation of the laws by which the living principle or excitability is acted on, it will be first necessary to define some terms, which I shall have occasion to use, to avoid circumlocution: and here it may not be improper to observe, that most of our errors in reasoning have arisen from want of strict attention to this circumstance, the accurate definition of those terms which we use in our reasoning. We may use what terms we please, provided ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... professor's chair. He made use of poetry as a means to accomplish ends foreign and extrinsecal to it; and this has often polluted the artistic purity of his compositions. Thus, the end of his Mahomet was to portray the dangers of fanaticism, or rather, laying aside all circumlocution, of a belief in revelation. For this purpose, he has most unjustifiably disfigured a great historical character, revoltingly loaded him with the most crying enormities, with which he racks and tortures our feelings. Universally ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... to put us in possession of the entire facts this morning. When we returned at the hour appointed, he had absconded, having received his discharge. We then went to his house and saw his wife, who asserted, after some circumlocution, that you had been concerned in speculations with her husband, that at your request she had burnt most of the letters you had written to herself and her husband, and that all were in a disguised hand—like these few which she had preserved. You will admit ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is "to tip him a kiss;" "pingue ingenium" is a circumlocution for "a blockhead;" "anilia instrumenta" are "his old woman's accoutrements;" and "repetito munere Bacchi" is conveyed to the sense of the reader as, "they return again to their bottle, and take the other glass." These are but a specimen of the blemishes which disfigure the most literal ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the lively young gentleman who two years before had indulged in those little frolics at my expense. With diplomatic ceremony and circumlocution I introduced the object of my visit, and wound up with an ultimatum to this effect: There must either be a frank apology for past indignities, or he must accompany me, each with a friend, to some suitable spot, and there decide which was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... took always the form of the pianoforte language; his thinking became paralysed when he made use of another medium of expression. Still, there have been critics who thought differently. The Polish composer Sowinski declared without circumlocution that Chopin "wrote admirably for the orchestra." Other countrymen of his dwelt at greater length, and with no less enthusiasm, on what is generally considered a weak point in the master's equipment. A Paris correspondent of the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik (1834) remarked ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... carries this propensity so far as to divide words where there is no corresponding division of thoughts or of things. This is a very convenient practice, in so far as the ordinary business of life is concerned: for it saves much circumlocution, much expenditure of sound. But it runs the risk of making great havoc with scientific thinking; and there cannot be a doubt that it has helped to confirm psychology in its worst errors, by leading the unwary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... communicate the fact to one of the circle that he was in danger of becoming a bore; the head of the family was finally deputed to convey the fact as delicately as possible to the erring brother. He did so, with much tender circumlocution. The offender was deeply mortified, but endeavoured to thank his elderly relative for discharging so painful a task. He promised amendment. He sate glum and tongue-tied for several weeks in the midst of cheerful gatherings. Very gradually the old habit prevailed. Within six months ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stepfather should die. I had sentenced him in the name of my inalienable right as an avenging son; but could I not condemn him to die by his own hand? Had I not that in my possession which would drive him to suicide? If I went to him without any more reserves or circumlocution, and if I said to him, "I hold the proof that you are the murderer of my father. I give you the choice—either you will kill yourself, or I denounce you to my mother," what would his answer be? He, who loved his wife with that ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... revising his work, did not see the inconsistency of his instructions in relation to phrases of this kind. First he copies Lowth's doctrine, literally and anonymously, from the Doctor's 17th page, thus: "When the thing to which another is said to belong, is expressed by a circumlocution, or by many terms, the sign of the possessive case is commonly added to the last term: as, 'The king of Great Britain's dominions.'"—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 45. Afterwards he condemns this: "The word in the genitive case is frequently ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... seemed to be still in love with Socrates. You are sober, Alcibiades, said Socrates, or you would never have gone so far about to hide the purpose of your satyr's praises, for all this long story is only an ingenious circumlocution, of which the point comes in by the way at the end; you want to get up a quarrel between me and Agathon, and your notion is that I ought to love you and nobody else, and that you and you only ought to love Agathon. But the plot of this Satyric ...
— Symposium • Plato
... then seemed, audacity. The colonists he treated as an operator, who indeed pities the sufferings of his patient, but disregards a natural outcry, while expounding in the language of science both the symptoms and the cure. Without circumlocution or reserve, he spoke of the officers concerned in convict management as blinded by habit—as empirics who could patch and cauterise a wound, but were involved in the hopeless prejudices of a topical practice, and much too far gone to comprehend ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Roseleaf, soberly. "Well, this story, to be truthful, must do justice to the one who is supposed to personate its author. And, in the first place, to avoid all circumlocution, let me tell you there has never been a moment since I first loved Daisy Fern that she has not been the dearest thing on ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... future, it becomes a thing not only useful, but absolutely necessary, that the excess of honour and admiration with which our existing stock of inventions is regarded be in the very entrance and threshold of the work, and that frankly and without circumlocution, stripped off, and men be duly warned not to exaggerate or make too much of them. For let a man look carefully into all that variety of books with which the arts and sciences abound, he will find everywhere ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... novel of purpose, or what the Germans call a tendenz-roman; as Dickens did, for example, when he attacked imprisonment for debt, in Pickwick; the poor laws, in Oliver Twist; the Court of Chancery, in Bleak House; and the Circumlocution office, in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... apologized, though with less circumlocution than the worthy Corporal; and nothing further occurred to disturb either the harmony of the company, or the equanimity of Mr. Tickels, until Mr. Goldworthy, with a countenance full of astonishment and alarm, announced to ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... you written against the CHANCERY STYLE, then" (the painfully solemn style, of ceremonial and circumlocution; Letters written so as to be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... could have made it into interesting verses; but, as it is, we must content ourselves with the laconic recitals that have been handed down by tradition, and, as all the Greek performances of those days were marked by an intense decisiveness, with an utter lack of circumlocution, it is probable that there was not much to relate beyond the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... and swore at this circumlocution: the thing could be done as well in a week as in a year; and the veterans, who, for a miracle, had agreed in their rival stations, and in doubtful moments of success, were near splitting on the point of marrying a ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... seeing Lesbia alone, and then and there, with very little circumlocution, asked her ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... response "Sure thing" by an appropriate circumlocution, and then he thundered back: "How in—nature—is a young writer to forecast the demands of current editors? If an editor is worth his salt—his Attic salt—he does not know himself what he wants, except by the eternal yearning of the editorial soul for something new ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... it," interrupted the positive-minded lady, unheeding and scarcely hearing Mr. Burleigh's dubious circumlocution, and she put her finger to her forehead for a moment in an affected stage-like manner, as if her ideas of the "eternal fitness of things" had been obtained from the sensational drama. "I have it: the child himself shall hand her the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... to divide words where there is no corresponding division of thoughts or of things. This is a very convenient practice, in so far as the ordinary business of life is concerned: for it saves much circumlocution, much expenditure of sound. But it runs the risk of making great havoc with scientific thinking; and there cannot be a doubt that it has helped to confirm psychology in its worst errors, by leading the unwary thinker to suppose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... with her peculiar exact deliberation and gift of circumlocution, "it is better to go and sew your sampler than to ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Man and Rationall, are of equall extent, comprehending mutually one another. But here wee must take notice, that by a Name is not alwayes understood, as in Grammar, one onely word; but sometimes by circumlocution many words together. For all these words, Hee That In His Actions Observeth The Lawes Of His Country, make but one Name, equivalent to this one ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... when almost simultaneously with this announcement two proclamations were issued from Lennox Street, it was more than hoped, it was assumed, that the meat ordinance was to be relaxed. But it was not so. The first of these monuments to circumlocution had a final rap at the canteen. There were a few bars and canteens outside the barriers of the town; the Colonel said they should be closed, and closed they were—the proprietors, strange to say, assenting with a will. This alacrity was not consistent with their earlier diatribes against ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... friend. For this purpose he sent it to Spalatin, requesting him to forward it. Then, on December 1, he wrote a letter to Albert himself. Its tone and contents indicate pretty plainly what the pamphlet itself contained. In clear vigorous German, and without any circumlocution, he submits to the Cardinal his 'humble request,' to abstain from corrupting the poor people, and not to show himself a wolf in bishop's clothing. He must surely know by this time that indulgences were sheer knavery and trickery. He was not to imagine that Luther was dead: Luther would trust cheerfully ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... impossible to extract from Mr. Bishopriggs any clearer description of the man who had been with Anne at the inn than this, Blanche approached the main object of the interview. Too anxious to waste time in circumlocution, she turned the conversation at once to the delicate and doubtful subject of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... to ask this of Mr. Irving, you must allow me to impose it as a condition of my request that you will not do it; or if Mr. Irving is reluctant to give the letters, do not undertake to tell me so with any circumlocution, for I understand all about the delicacy of these Transatlantic connections. I only fear that the very length of this letter will convey to you an undue impression of the importance which I give to the subject of it. Pray construe ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... the opinion of Jenifer's father about himself and the engagement, as to find out her present whereabouts. From the first moment of their meeting he knew that he did not stand in the Archbishop's good graces; but that hardly concerned him; and so it was almost without circumlocution that he asked for ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... system, to discharge some temper before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's lives. They would be happier if he were dead. They could easier do without his services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily hag-ridden by a ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see her at once, or as soon as possible." And at this opportune moment Dora came down the stairs. Theodore advanced to meet her, and feeling almost certain of the character with which he had to deal, came to the point at once without hesitation or circumlocution. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... pretty good order, to do their mother justice, and she in great delight at the sight of her visiters. There was no room for silence here—or at least no silence in the room, for Mrs. Ling was never at a loss for words. And there was no need of much circumlocution in presenting the turkey,—nothing but pleasure could come of it, let it enter on which foot it would; and the train of potatoes, and tea, and bread, and other things, fairly made Mrs. Ling's eyes shine,—though ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... encounter a rather sharp volley when he went to the office next morning. After some general remarks as to the distinguished party which he had accompanied to the races, Seymour Hicks could not resist inquiring, though with some circumlocution, whether the lady was a countess. The lady was not a countess. Who was the lady? The lady was Mrs. Rodney. Who was Mrs. Rodney? She was the wife of Mr. Rodney, who accompanied her. Was Mr. Rodney a relation of Lord Rodney? ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... to this, and the proceedings went on in due form. Without being sworn, the plaintiff was called upon to state his case, which he did with an elaborate circumlocution altogether without a parallel in my experience. He detailed the whole history of his life—from his birth, in Wolfenbuettel, up to his seven years' service in the army; then followed his whole military career; and after that, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... "fears" that one has stepped aside from the narrow path of duty, when one knows perfectly well that one has done so, is a ridiculous half-dodging of the truth; let me dismiss from my service such a cowardly circumlocution, and squarely say that I neglected the Cowpens during certain days which now followed. Nay, more; I totally deserted them. Although I feel quite sure that to discover one is a real king's descendant must bring an exultation of no mean order to the heart, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... speech we are obliged to distinguish by elaborate circumlocution between a man's place of residence and that larger and truer life,—his sphere of sympathies. Emerson lived in Concord, Carlyle in Chelsea; to the casual reader these phrases convey the impression that the life of Emerson ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... Stoner was urging him on to go straight to the point. No fencing, said this inward monitor, no circumlocution—get to it, straight out. And Stoner thrust his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a copy of the reward bill. He opened it before his employer, watching ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... after the first effects of novelty and surprise were over, been prejudicial to the matter. It takes from the general power, not only to please, but to instruct. The monotony of style produces an apparent monotony of ideas. What is really striking and valuable, is lost in the vain ostentation and circumlocution of the expression; for when we find the same pains and pomp of diction bestowed upon the most trifling as upon the most important parts of a sentence or discourse, we grow tired of distinguishing between pretension and reality, and are ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... point, but in vain. Brian would not even allow him to feel his pulse. But the doctor knew very well what was amiss, and told Mrs. Wendover, with delicate circumlocution, that her husband was suffering from an imprudent use of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... So then, we must go up in our searching from external obedience all alongst, till we arrive at the inward fountain of Christ dwelling in us by faith, and then have ye found true religion indeed. Now, ye may think possibly, we have used too much circumlocution: what is all this to the present purpose? Yes, very much. Ye shall find the Lord rejecting this people's public worship and solemn ordinances upon these three grounds,—either they did not join with them the observation ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... is that each should guard his lips, chasten his pen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense, circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to complicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of plain-dealing does more for the salvation of the world than years ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... pink-and-white complexion and eyes expressive of anything but holiness; he was a desperate votary of the fair sex, and swaggered about paying his homage right and left. Will it be believed, this gay apostle actually told me, without circumlocution, that in the monastery of Tor di Specchi there dwelt a young lady who was in love with me? I, who of course desired no better, took the hint instantly, and had her pointed out to me. Then began an interchange of silly messages, of languishing looks, and a hundred absurdities ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling about his person: he had half a million of eager testimonies to this idea. Who was to tell him the truth?—Only in the last years of his life did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution, that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a—having never been called to—but what of that, d'ye see? perhaps I may know as much as—facts are facts, as the saying is.—I shall tell, repeat, and relate a plain story—matters of fact, d'ye see, without rhetoric, oratory, ornament, or embellishment; without repetition, tautology, circumlocution, or going about the bush; facts which I shall aver, partly on the testimony of my own knowledge, and partly from the information of responsible evidences of good repute and credit, any circumstance known ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... was looking over his tortoiseshell. spectacles at somebody behind him, Mr. Lavender turned and went out. In the corridor he thought, "What terseness! How different from the days when Dickens wrote his 'Circumlocution Office'! Punch!" And opening the wrong door, he found himself in the presence of six little girls in brown frocks, sitting against the walls with their thumbs in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the family taking an early breakfast, at 11 a.m., in his cosey apartments on Thirty-fourth Street. With the least possible circumlocution she confronted him with what rumor had reported of his pursuits, and was pleased, but not too much pleased, when he gave her an exact account of his relations with Mademoiselle Zabriski, neither concealing nor qualifying anything. ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... words of polite circumlocution, or of cautious diplomacy, shall we say, or hint, that the deceased ambassador's papers were found in shameful disorder. His excellency's executor, Sir James Brooke, however, was indefatigable in his researches. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... of Americans is seen not only in what they say but in the way they say it. They come directly to the point, without much preface or introduction, much less is there any circumlocution or "beating about the bush". When they come to see you they say their say and then take their departure, moreover they say it in the most terse, concise and unambiguous manner. In this respect what ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... with the admiral, who was himself a man of much older family than her father. He attacked the general the next morning. He hated circumlocution and went directly to the point. "You object to your daughter marrying Sir Pearce Ripley because his father was a boatswain. I tell you I was for many years of inferior rank to a boatswain. I entered the navy as captain's servant. What do you say to that? It does not signify what a man ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the revolution pervaded every line, every word. The writers did not dare to propose plainly the revocation of the Charter, and the abolition of the new institutions; but they declared without any circumlocution, that the dynasty of the Bourbons would never be secure with the existing laws; and that it was necessary, to distrust and get rid of the men of the revolution. More effectually to know and persecute these, M. de Blacas had caused to be disinterred from the archives of the cabinet, and of the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Medusa's head. Her face went stony in a moment—her eyes—her limbs. The most terrible thing was that being stony she remained alive. One was conscious of her palpitating heart. I hope she forgave me the delay of my clumsy circumlocution. It was not very prolonged; she could not have kept so still from head to foot for more than a second or two; and then I heard her draw a breath. As if the shock had paralysed her moral resistance, and affected the firmness of her muscles, the contours of her face seemed ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... in the formula of the country. His tone was not enthusiastic. Purvis was so prone to circumlocution that the fact that he had asked deliberately to accompany him on the ride towards the mail in the cool of the evening convinced him that the man could have nothing ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... preserve the happy medium, for there is such a thing as being too systematic. There are men and women, for instance, who put away things so carefully that they can never find them again. It is too much like the "red tape" formality at Washington, and Mr. Dickens' "Circumlocution Office,"—all theory and ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... language was not that of a man honestly desirous of arriving at the truth. Still the King did not like to propose directly to his brother in law the simple choice, apostasy or dismissal: but, three days after the conference, Barillon waited on the Treasurer, and, with much circumlocution and many expressions of friendly concern, broke the unpleasant truth. "Do you mean," said Rochester, bewildered by the involved and ceremonious phrases in which the intimation was made, "that, if I do not turn Catholic, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... resulted to the peace of Europe, and the name of Napoleon II. as a possible and perhaps the best solution of the problems involved in our future. All this was expressed in guarded but sufficiently definite terms, equally without passion or circumlocution, and with a marked intention of ascertaining to what extent I should admit or reject the prospects on which he enlarged. I was unprepared, both for the visit and the conversation; but I stood on no reserve, not expecting to convert M. Manuel to my own views, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this young man, the son of her family solicitor. Mark was invariably sent down by his father when there was any business to be transacted at Stoke Revel. The older man was fond of a good dinner, and hated circumlocution about affairs, and it was only when a death in the family, or some other crucial event, made his presence absolutely necessary that he came down himself. Mark was sacrificed instead, and many a wearisome hour had he ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... somewhat superfluous; but the question remained, what was necessary? With a view of getting some light on this delicate subject we paid a visit the next evening to our former friends and schoolmates, whose advice was conveyed with a masterly circumlocution that impressed us both. There are some things that may not be discussed directly, and the conduct of life at a modern university—which is a reflection of life in the greater world—is one of these. Perry Blackwood and Ham did ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... inconsistent with treaty obligations." Thus the legal status quo has been maintained, and the Chinese population in America is gradually decreasing. No new laborers are permitted to come and those now here go home as old age overtakes them. But the public has come to recognize that diplomatic circumlocution cannot conceal the crude and harsh treatment which the Chinaman has received; that the earlier laws were based upon reports that greatly exaggerated the evils and were silent upon the virtues of the Oriental; and that a policy which had its conception ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... his stories with imperturbable sang froid, in a dry manner, and with perfect naturalness and simplicity. He spoke as a man of the world, without circumlocution; his adventures were numerous and perhaps singular, but only such as might have been expected to happen to a man of so much experience. A smile never traversed his face as he related the least credible of his tales, which the less intimate of his acquaintance began in time to think he meant ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... with no prophetic voice to tell us the way. By implication we have had hints, and much has been said on the negative side, but the positive side still lies fallow. When asked for an explanation, those who give the quotation resort to circumlocution and, at length, give another definition of education, apparently conscious of the mathematical dictum that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. So we continue to travel in a circle, with but feeble attempts to deviate ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... abstract being; it merely indicates that the effect spoken of necessarily springs from the peculiar properties of those beings which compose the mighty macrocosm. When, therefore, it is said, Nature demands that man should pursue his own happiness, it is to prevent circumlocution—to avoid tautology; it is to be understood, that it is the property of a being that feels, that thinks, that acts, to labour to its own happiness; in short, that is called natural, which is conformable to the essence of things, or to the laws, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... on the Richardson-McFarland case, I feel disinclined to be associated with her in editorial work. I want to say this very gently; but I have no time for circumlocution.... ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... with less circumlocution than the worthy Corporal; and nothing further occurred to disturb either the harmony of the company, or the equanimity of Mr. Tickels, until Mr. Goldworthy, with a countenance full of astonishment and alarm, announced to his guests that he had, during the evening, lost from ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... speaking, there was a laugh at his plainness of speech, as he seemed to be still in love with Socrates. "You are sober, Alcibiades," said Socrates, "or you would never have gone about to hide the purpose of your satyr's praises, for all this long story is only an ingenious circumlocution, the point of which comes in by the way at the end; you want to get up a quarrel between me and Agathon, and your notion is that I ought to love you and nobody else, and that you and you only ought to love Agathon. But the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... experience, that when one friend has a piece of disagreeable intelligence to disclose to another, it is better to describe it directly, and in simple terms, than to introduce it with that kind of periphrasis and circumlocution, which oftener tends to excite a vague and impatient horror in the reader, than to prepare him to bear his misfortune with decency and fortitude. There are however no rules of this kind that do not admit of exceptions, and I am too apprehensive that the subject of my ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... inventor may have been acquainted, and which may have had nothing to recommend it to those who so readily adopted it, save novelty and the recognized need of some more convenient name than "Lutherans," "Christaudins," or the awkward circumlocution, "those of the religion." Be this as it may, not a week had passed after the conspiracy of Amboise before the word was in everybody's mouth. Few knew ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... great value. Now, it is very possible, that a child might, on the contrary, learn all the properties, and the various uses of gold, without having learned its name; his ideas of this metal would be perfectly distinct; but whenever he wished to speak of gold, he would be obliged to use a vast deal of circumlocution to make himself understood; and if he were to enumerate all the properties of the metal every time he wanted to recal the general idea, his conversation would be intolerably tedious to others, and to himself this useless repetition must be extremely laborious. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... an ugly pilgrimage; but whether of love or of necessity who could tell? And that precisely was what I should have liked to get at. This was not however a question to be asked point-blank, and I could not think of any effective circumlocution. It occurred to me too that she might conceivably know nothing of it herself—I mean by reflection. That young woman had been obviously considering death. She had gone the length of forming some conception of it. But as to its companion fatality—love, she, I was ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the servant with the lunch tray, she caused him to draw his chair sociably up to the fire, and said, without any circumlocution: ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... European languages into Active and Passive, seems to be useless in Slavic; for their being active or passive has no influence upon their flexion; and the forms of the Latin Passive and Deponent must in Slavic be expressed by a circumlocution. A division of more importance and springing from the peculiarity of the language itself, is that into verbs Perfect and Imperfect. Neither the Greek, nor the Latin, nor the German, nor any of the languages derived from them, admits of a similar distinction. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... know there's no need of circumlocution and feminine wiles when you want anything of me, Princess. You have but to speak, and, as the Frenchman said, 'If it is possible, it shall be done: if it is impossible, I can only regret that I can't do it.' What do you want me ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... she says afterwards—her strong expressions, which are calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves—the reflections she interposes—her delays and circumlocution to give time for any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself—all, all are premeditated and tend in the same manner to the object she ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... investigation of the laws by which the living principle or excitability is acted on, it will be first necessary to define some terms, which I shall have occasion to use, to avoid circumlocution: and here it may not be improper to observe, that most of our errors in reasoning have arisen from want of strict attention to this circumstance, the accurate definition of those terms which we use in our reasoning. We may use what terms ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... their nature ephemeral. There is, consequently, a widespread and well justified mistrust of novel schemes for the industrial regeneration of Ireland. I confess to having had my ingenuity severely taxed on some occasions to find a sympathetic circumlocution wherewith to show cause for declining to join a new movement, my real reason being an inward conviction that nothing except resolutions would be moved. In the complex problem of building up the economic and social life of a people with such a history ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... This rebuff is generally spoken of by the press as 'the Nashville Snag.' There be such things as snag-extractors, and we trust that our Government is free enough from red-tape do-nothingism and circumlocution, to make short work of these insolent ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is practice to theory! Among other things, and in reply to a question relative to the infantry, whose courage is much more tried by marching than by fighting, he said this, which I give you free from circumlocution: ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... Pentateuch is sometimes such as Addison would not have ventured to imitate; and Addison, the standard of moral purity in his own age, used many phrases which are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be designated by a plain noun substantive or by a circumlocution is mere matter of fashion. Morality is not at all interested in the question. But morality is deeply interested in this, that what is immoral shall not be presented to the imagination of the young and susceptible in constant ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... approaching a habit; and as it did so, the whispers as rapidly changed into plain, open speech, and the words which were interchanged lost their original air of confidential mysteriousness, until, finally, people told each other without very much circumlocution that there was, in their opinion, more in the strange deaths of Tiahuana and Motahuana than met the eye. And if they were asked to express themselves more plainly they reminded each other that the two priests, who had died under such really remarkable ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... termination, but they were concluded at last, most successfully, and to Edwardes alone is due the credit. It is instructive to read the full record[1] of this tedious and difficult piece of diplomacy, for it serves as an interesting example of Oriental subtlety and circumlocution, contrasted with the straightforward dealing ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... praising our recent Cartoon representing the "Barnacles on American Commerce," moves to refer us to the House Committee on Commerce and Manufactures. PUNCHINELLO never did love the ways of the Washington Circumlocution Office, but if there is one thing which he dislikes more than anything else, 'tis the idea of being pigeonholed by the Committee on Commerce. The uses to which valuable information is put by that august body of traffickers in public ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... henceforward, a right to be considered and a claim to be refuted, in each particular case, before the production of living matter in any other way could be admitted by careful reasoners. It will be necessary for me to refer to this hypothesis so frequently, that, to save circumlocution, I shall call it the hypothesis of Biogenesis; and I shall term the contrary doctrine—that living matter may be produced by not ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is "to tip him a kiss;" "pingue ingenium" is a circumlocution for "a blockhead;" "anilia instrumenta" are "his old woman's accoutrements;" and "repetito munere Bacchi" is conveyed to the sense of the reader as, "they return again to their bottle, and take the other glass." These are but a specimen of the blemishes which ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... been wondering a good deal what she would say, how she would accede, and then he perceived that her dignity knew no circumlocution. 'I will send the man for your horse.' She said it with hardly a ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... accomplished. Equally important is it to cultivate economy of speech, or the habit of condensing instructions to assistants, and answers to inquiries into the fewest words. A library should never be a circumlocution office. The faculty of condensed expression, though ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... laugh at his outspokenness; for he seemed to be still in love with Socrates. You are sober, Alcibiades, said Socrates, or you would never have gone so far about to hide the purpose of your satyr's praises, for all this long story is only an ingenious circumlocution, of which the point comes in by the way at the end; you want to get up a quarrel between me and Agathon, and your notion is that I ought to love you and nobody else, and that you and you only ought to love Agathon. But the plot of this Satyric or Silenic drama ...
— Symposium • Plato
... Pugh), and think of him as merely heralding the great Collectivist revolt against Victorian Individualism and Capitalism, which seemed so clearly to be the crisis at the end of this epoch—you will suddenly remember the agreeable young Barnacle at the Circumlocution Office: and you will be unable, for very shame, to assert that Dickens would have trusted the poor to a State Department. Dickens did not merely believe in the brotherhood of men in the weak modern way; he was the brotherhood of men, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... fresh schism in the army: that is, civil war. Encouraged by so solemn a sanction, Venizelist candidates—notably at Tyrnavo in Thessaly and Dervenion in Argolis—told their constituents without any circumlocution that, in the event of a defeat at the polls, the Government would not surrender its power, but would maintain it through the Army of National Defence, which was pledged to a new Revolution: the Parliamentary system ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... council with them. The Indians all met me in council, as I had desired, and I then told them that the men who had taken part in shooting the woman would have to be delivered up for punishment. They were very stiff with me at the interview, and with all that talent for circumlocution and diplomacy with which the Indian is lifted, endeavored to evade my demands and delay any conclusion. But I was very positive, would hear of no compromise whatever, and demanded that my terms be at once complied with. No one was with me but a sergeant of my company, named ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... me to dare Fate in its blindest manifestations. The world has come to run so much by rote and gravitation that you can enter upon hardly any footpath of chance in which you do not find signboards informing you of what you may expect at its end. I am like the clerk in the Circumlocution Office who always complained bitterly when any one came in to ask information. 'He wanted to know, you know!' was the kick he made to his fellow-clerks. Well, I don't want to know, I don't want to reason, I don't want to guess—I want to bet ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... ceremony we were ushered into a suite of elegantly furnished rooms, and received by the consul-general and his English wife in full dress. Madame de Vlassow was radiant with smiles as she served us tea by the side of her steaming silver samovar. She could not wait for the circumlocution of diplomacy, but said: "It is all right, gentlemen. General Kuropatkine has just telegraphed permission for you to proceed to Askabad." This precipitate remark evidently disconcerted the consul, who could only nod his head and say, "Oui, oui," in affirmation. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... meal in his usual loquacious manner; and after a great many words and circumlocution, the fact was discovered that he and his friends had spent the last five years in California, not having visited a civilized post ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... minutes in a brown study, looking thoughtfully at the person from whom they proceeded. After sufficient cogitation he broke silence, and it certainly could not be objected that he used any needless circumlocution, or failed to speak directly ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... can feel no other love than that which he cherishes for his own worthy person, and the purses of all others. Let him explain now, quickly and without circumlocution, if he really wishes my pardon, why, after going to Nurnberg to marry a bag of gold, containing a few millions, he has now returned ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... particular; we did all we cou'd to prevent any of the Meaning and Grace of the best Words to be lost; so that we were often forc'd to search and study some time for those most proper, and oftentimes to express 'em by two, and sometimes by a Circumlocution: Which Madam Dacier her self, as accurate as she is accompted, has often neglected: And thereby has wholly lost the Force and Beauty of many Emphatical Words. Terence had some Words taken in a great many several Sences, such as Contumelia and Injuria, Odiosus, Tristis, &c. these we ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... replied he; 'I wish to be fair. I cannot express my idea of the meaning of transcendentalism without tedious circumlocution, and I begin to despair of proving my position by quotations. It is not on any particular passage that I rest my case. You have read this work, and will understand me when I say that it is to its general intent ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men. Principles which the most hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted accomplice, or avow, without the disguise of some palliating sophism, even to his own mind, are professed without the slightest circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental axioms ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... see what yo' mean, Captain Hazzard,—no, sir, der was no circumlocution ob de objec', in fac', sah, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... from Miss Clarendon's tongue, if it had been uttered in a softer tone, and if she had paid a little more attention to times and seasons: but she held it the sacred duty of sincerity to tell a friend her faults as soon as seen, and without circumlocution. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... examination, Everard is committed for trial on the charge of murder. His best witness, Granfer, who had seen and spoken with him in the village at the moment of the alleged murder, greatly discredited his evidence by his circumlocution and stupidity, purposely affected to set the court in a roar. He admitted that Everard gave him money and tobacco. Judkins swore that at three o'clock Lee told him Everard had asked Alma to meet him at dusk that evening in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... unhappily,—"there is nobody about the King who possesses his complete confidence, or whom we can make use of in regard to the necessary introductions and preliminary movements. Hereby it comes that,—as certain things can only be handled with cautious foresight and circumlocution, and in the way of beginning wide,—an Ambassador here is more thrown out of his course than in any other Court; and knows not, though his object were steadily in sight, what road to strike into for getting towards it." [Preuss, Thronbesteigung, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... happen; and the best that we can hope is to remedy them with as small delay as possible. I will not deny that I fear you have made a mistake and honoured my poor house by inadvertence; for, to speak openly, I cannot at all remember your appearance. Let me put the question without unnecessary circumlocution—between gentlemen of honour a word will suffice—Under whose roof do you suppose ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was to his master's tricks of circumlocution, the bravo was so far from expecting this question, that at first he stood mute, and only after a few moments' pause was able ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... shorter are to be employed indifferently, according as either of them is better calculated to sharpen the wits of the auditors. Reason would also say to him who censures the length of discourses on such occasions and cannot away with their circumlocution, that he should not be in such a hurry to have done with them, when he can only complain that they are tedious, but he should prove that if they had been shorter they would have made those who took part in them better dialecticians, and more capable of ...
— Statesman • Plato
... sentence take the place of these pronouns. Such at least seems to be the usage of the ko[u]dan writers, and in the present book the example has been followed, as far as possible. In a few instances the use of a pronoun will relieve the strain of a lengthy sentence or involved circumlocution in the western tongue. At times the closer style can be abandoned—as in the direct narration of the Tale of the Baryufu Kwannon. So also with the translations of the gidayu and the ko[u]dan attached. These are for recitation. In the original the pronoun is rarely written ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... seldom long. Rachel was soon through the first, her blood boiling; the second she could not finish for her tears; the third dried her eyes with the fires of fierce resentment. It was not so much what they said; it was what they were obviously afraid to say. It was their circumlocution, their innuendo, their mild surprise, their perfunctory congratulations, their assumption of chivalry and their lack of its essence, that wounded and stung the subject of these effusions. As she raised her flushed face from the last of them, Mr. Steel stood before ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... made at prodigious length and with great wealth of Eastern circumlocution, the only phrase that took root in his rather bewildered mind was that which concerned the chastening of the enemies of Islam. The enemies of Islam he conceived, were his own enemies; and he further conceived that they stood in ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... that her name was Mrs. Russell; that she had been captured, along with her daughter, by the Carlists; that she had escaped, hoping to get help to rescue her daughter. All this Russell stated, not without much circumlocution and contradiction. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... of documents; dissertations stood in place of action; a million of reports were written every year; bureaucracy was enthroned! Records, statistics, documents, failing which France would have been ruined, circumlocution, without which there could be no advance, increased, multiplied, and grew majestic. From that day forth bureaucracy used to its own profit the mistrust that stands between receipts and expenditures; it degraded the administration for the benefit of the administrators; in short, it spun those lilliputian ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Metternich with consummate skill in the interest of Austria against Prussia and against German confidence in the sincerity and trustworthiness of the Prussian government, the reaction had by arrests, prosecutions, circumlocution-office delays, banishments, and an elaborate system of espionage, for the most part silenced opposition and saved, not the state, but, at any rate, the status quo. This "success" had incidentally cost Germany the presence ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... tale, swaddling clothes about an infant when it should run about stark naked. May the great devil give them a clyster with his red-hot three-pronged fork. I am going on with my story now without further circumlocution. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... notions to others as to what is an insult," said the officer, with a sneer, intended to excite Morton's anger. "My friend Maguire is exceedingly sensitive as to his honour. Not to lose time, sir, by any circumlocution in my remarks, you are, sir, I am led to understand, Lieutenant Morton, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... from Rosanette. She thanked him for having risked his life on her behalf. Frederick did not at first understand what she meant; finally, after a considerable amount of circumlocution, while appealing to his friendship, relying on his delicacy, as she put it, and going on her knees to him on account of the pressing necessity of the case, as she wanted bread, she asked him for a loan of ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... seen her Poems? A fine, artless, sensible girl. Now, Cottle, that word sensible must not be construed here in its dictionary acceptation. Ask a Frenchman what it means, and he will understand it, though, perhaps, he can by no circumlocution explain its French meaning. Her heart is alive. She loves poetry. She loves retirement. She loves the country. Her verses are very incorrect, and the literary circle say, she has no genius, but she has genius, Joseph Cottle, or there is no truth in physiognomy. Gilbert Wakefield came ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... great leader on this question, approved by the Quakers, and adopted by Pennsylvania in 1780, liberated all the descendants of slaves born after that date within the limits of the State. To avoid circumlocution, I shall call those born before the date of emancipating laws the ante nati, and those born after the date of such laws, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... then, was a mysterious 'Court of Chance,' where things dragged on for years, a political circumlocution office, hopelessly bound by its own interminable ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... which in manuscript was, however, well known. It is a Memoir of King William IV., purporting to be drawn up by himself, and extending over the eventful years of 1830-35 'King William's style,' says the uncourtly biographer, "abounds to overflowing in what is called in England Parliamentary circumlocution, in which, instead of direct, simple expressions, bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the end intolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a foreigner to despair." The style is indeed august; but the real penman is not the King, whose strong ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... have a great partiality for the use of the passive voice, and avoid the active when the passive can be used. The Bakele verb delights in the active voice, and will avoid the passive even by a considerable circumlocution. The Benga takes an intermediate position in this respect, and uses the active and passive very much as we ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Heathcote was wont to pass those portions of his time that were not occupied in his secret strivings for the faith, or in exercise without, while superintending the laborers in the fields. With some little circumlocution, which was intended to mask his real motives, the agent of the King announced his intention to take his final departure ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... o'clock at night, November 20th, that Colonel Allen, Captain Baker, and more than a score of their friends, entered the settlement with all the care and circumlocution of Indians. Nuck and Lot Breckenridge had joined the party at supper time in a certain rendezvous of Allen's in the woods, having hidden their canoe and traps on the bank of the Otter several miles away. The attacking force of Green Mountain Boys was heavily armed and might ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... murderer, and I could not see how that murderer could be punished without ruin to my unfortunate James. You asked for frankness, Mr. Holmes, and I have taken you at your word, for I have now told you everything without an attempt at circumlocution or concealment. Do you in turn be as ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have communicated the sad event to you by degrees, and have prepared you to hear it with fortitude. My measures are broken through: This order commands me to deliver up to you the Sister Agnes without delay; I am therefore obliged to inform you without circumlocution, that on Friday ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... name of his majesty's disease under the appellation of a cutaneous eruption, chicken-pox, etc., etc., none daring to give it its true denomination. Bordeu and Lemonnier pursued this cautious plan, but La Martiniere, who had first of all pronounced his decision on the subject, impatient of so much circumlocution on the part of those around him, could no longer repress his indignation. "How is this, gentlemen!" exclaimed he, "is science at a standstill with you? Surely, you cannot be in any doubt on the subject of the king's illness. His majesty has the small-pox, with a complication ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... simple and direct. He abounds in concrete terms. Pope dislikes a simple term and loves a circumlocution and an abstraction. We have the concrete "herd of swine" translated into "a bristly care," "skins," into "furry spoils." The concrete was considered common and undignified. Homer says in simple language: "His father wept ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... not without circumlocution and many hideous oaths, detailed in his hearer's willing ears the scheme he had in view. He proposed, with Mr. Ryfe's assistance, to accomplish no less flagrant an outrage than the forcible abduction of Lady Bearwarden ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... the authority at your back; now I myself appointed the authorities out there; I am sure of them. This, Uncle Fischer, is a dead secret between us. I know you well, and I have spoken out without concealment or circumlocution." ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... then? How will the young ones help their mother out of the scrape? How will they get out themselves: for I suppose they don't leave the nest till they are pretty well grown? Come! good shikaree; let us have no more circumlocution about the matter, but explain all these ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... answered these interrogatories by propounding the question, who the gentleman was to whom I had the honour of addressing myself, and under what authority I was considered amenable to his inquisition. "Answer my enquiries, Sir," he replied, "without the impertinency of idle circumlocution, otherwise I shall consider you as a spy, and my provost-marshal shall instantly perform on your person the duties of his office!" I now resorted to my letters; I had no other alternative between existence and annihilation. Explaining, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... extinguished in Mars the use of compliment and circumlocution; and until I concluded, their looks of mild perplexity showed that neither Zulve nor her husband caught my purpose. I fancied—for, not daring to look them in the face, I had turned my downcast glance on Eveena—that she had perhaps ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... begun to detect the two main vices of Jargon? The first is that it uses circumlocution rather than short straight speech. It says 'In the case of John Jenkins deceased, the coffin' when it means 'John Jenkins's coffin': and its yea is not yea, neither is its nay nay: but its answer is in the affirmative or in the negative, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of Tuscan hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without circumlocution what does not appear upon the time-tables of the line from Empoli to Rome. Montepulciano has a station; but this railway station is at the distance of at least an hour and a half's drive from the mountain upon which the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... claiming an audience, which was instantly granted, Jonathan, without much circumlocution, related the sum of the strange story he had just learnt from Wood, omitting nothing except a few trifling particulars, which he thought it politic to keep back; and, with this view, he said not a word of there being any probability of capturing the fugitive, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hesitation and circumlocution, the nephew made up his mind to chill his uncle's hopes of the crown, and to speak a decided opinion in behalf of the man of his word, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that great wilderness of peaks which lay to the south and through which only the dogged sheepmen could fight their way, stealthily hidden, yet watching, lay Jasper Swope and his sheep. And not only Jasper with his pet man-killing Chihuahuano and all those low-browed compadres whom he called by circumlocution "brothers," but Jim, sore with his defeat, and many ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... better I am skeptical. Twenty-two hours after they were due my missing bearers made their appearance. Arrived at Ghazeepore, I addressed a complaint to the postmaster-general. Thereupon two sides of a large sheet of paper were spread for me with base official circumlocution, through the darkness of which I groped out, after some labor, the audacious libel that the blame, if there were any, rested entirely with myself. This stuff, signed by the functionary aforesaid, but doubtless concocted without his privity by one of his graceless subordinates, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... ran across the President, who was looking for him. With much courtesy and circumlocution he was told the thing he had been waiting to hear: the board, likewise, had discovered that Saint Margaret's had suddenly grown too small to hold both the Senior Surgeon and himself. Strangely enough, this troubled him little; there are times in a man's life when even the most ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... Neither can any Tongue, as I am perswaded, deliver a Matter with more Variety than ours, both plainly, and by Proverbes and Metaphors: for example, when we would be rid of one, we use to say, Be going, trudge, packe, bee faring hence, away shift; and by Circumlocution, Rather your Roome than your Companie, lets see your backe, come againe when I bid you, when you are called, sent for, intreated, willed, desired, invited; spare us your place, another in your stead, a ship of salt for you, save your credite, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... myself as best I could, but my excuses were rather tame, about which I did not trouble myself. I was told that all was known, and this amused me as I was aware that nothing was known. The marquis's mistress took hold of my arm, and told me, without any circumlocution, that I had the reputation of being inconstant, and by way of reply I observed politely that I was wrongfully accused, but that if there was any ground for the remark it was because I had never served so sweet ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a person of few words, and will therefore state without circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent. I speak Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I might easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of which town ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... synonymous; a new term was not introduced, but because the former was thought inadequate: names, therefore, have often many ideas, but few ideas have many names. It was then necessary to use the proximate word, for the deficiency of single terms can very seldom be supplied by circumlocution; nor is the inconvenience great of such mutilated interpretations, because the sense may easily be collected entire ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... marvellous diligence to accumulate material which was common to them both; but, when gathered, how impossible it is to work up that old junk into permanent engrossing interest let those answer who have grappled with ancient chronicles, or with many biographies. So, with a circumlocution which probably convicts me in advance of decisive deficiency as a narrator, I let myself go. I have no model, unless it be the old man sitting in the sun on a summer's day, bringing forth out of his memories things new and ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... table had been cleared and cheroots produced, without any circumlocution or preface, Shafto plunged into his subject and laid his information and suspicions before his friend who, to his ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... lowering her tone, and giving her chair a little confidential hitch toward the simple-hearted lady with whom formality and circumlocution were impossible, "that I am beginning to think about these ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... without fear of the mobile vulgus and its shallow views. In power, directness, urbanity, and impartiality, Mr. McGavack cannot be excelled. He marshals his arguments without passion, bias, or circumlocution; piling proof upon proof until none but the most stubborn England-hater can fail to blush at the equal injustice and stupidity of those who malign that mighty empire to whose earth-wide circle of civilisation we ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
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