"Periphrasis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to get much joy of this mouth-filling periphrasis as sneeringly he spoke of their ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... it is a fleshy style, when there is much periphrasis, and circuit of words; and when with more than enough, it grows fat and corpulent: arvina orationis, full of suet and tallow. It hath blood and juice when the words are proper and apt, their sound sweet, and the phrase ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... terrible in its nature, and in its manifest consequences, that there is no way of quieting our apprehensions about it, but by totally putting it out of sight, by substituting for it, through a sort of periphrasis, something of an ambiguous quality, and describing such a connexion under the terms of 'the usual relations of peace and amity.' By this means the proposed fraternity is hustled in the crowd of those treaties, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... looked into Crickledon's shop as he went by, he would have perceived Van Diemen Smith astride a piece of timber, smoking a pipe. Van Diemen saw Tinman. His eyes cocked and watered. It is a disgraceful fact to record of him without periphrasis. In truth, the bearded fellow was almost a woman at heart, and had come from the Antipodes throbbing to slap Martin Tinman on the back, squeeze his hand, run over England with him, treat him, and talk of old times in the presence of a trotting regiment of champagne. That affair of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have endeavoured to avoid the affectation of making new compound Greek words, where others equally expressive could be procured: as a short periphrasis is easier to be understood, and less burthensome ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... a periphrasis for a chief, that is, Mord. (2) "Earth's offspring," a periphrasis for ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... grief at the loss of Greek freedom through the battle of Chaeronea. Milton, Sonnet X. 'That dishonest victory At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, Kill'd with report that old man eloquent'. — EUM ... INSCRIBITUR: the periphrasis is common, and the verb inscribere is nearly always in the present tense (in later prose as well as in Cicero) as in 59. This is sometimes the case even where the neighboring verbs are in past tenses, as in Acad. 1, 12 nec se tenuit quin contra suum doctorem librum etiam ederet qui Sosus ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Pleiade to say that they aimed at overloading poetic diction with neologisms of classical origin; they sought to innovate with discretion; but they unquestionably aimed at the formation of a poetic diction distinct from that of prose; they turned away from simplicity of speech to ingenious periphrasis; they desired a select, aristocratic idiom for the service of verse; they recommended a special syntax in imitation of the Latin; for the elder forms of French poetry they would substitute reproductions or re-creations of classical forms. Rondeaux, ballades, virelais, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... "We," says Lamb, in his delightful way, "attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation was now to write treason." Lamb hinted at possible abdications. Blocks, axes, and Whitehall tribunals were covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis—as, Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing directly—that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... noxious, when breathed by animals. Rather, however, than either introduce new terms, or change the signification of old ones, I shall use the term fixed air, in the sense in which it is now commonly used, and distinguish the other kinds by their properties, or some other periphrasis. I shall be under a necessity, however, of giving names to those kinds of air, to which no names had been given by others, as nitrous, ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... it.[1496] Before the "reformation" people of the better classes in Japan went to the theater not at all, or secretly. The plays were coarse and outspoken. Japanese education permitted "both sexes indifferently to speak of everything without the slightest periphrasis, or any respect for persons, even children." Hence situations were described and presented on the stage which we should consider too licentious for toleration, although there were no actresses on the stage. This was not ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... There had been a callous dryness in his manner, an unswerving purpose in his spirit, that at once baffled all attempts at influence. Nor could Coningsby forget the look he received when he quitted the room. There was no possibility of mistaking it; it said at once, without periphrasis, 'Cross my purpose, and ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... he makes this observation: "In singing the Bound is originally produced by the action of the lungs, which are so essential an organ in this respect, that to have a good breast was formerly a common periphrasis to denote a good singer. The Italians make use of the terms Voce di Petto and Voce di Testa to signify two kinds of voice, of which the first is the best. In Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night,' after the clown is asked to sing, Sir ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... notice, too, the connection between these human needs of the Saviour and His power to give the divine gift. Why did He not simply say to this woman, 'If thou knewest who I am?' Why did He use this periphrasis of my text, 'Who it is that saith unto thee, "Give Me to drink"'? Why but because He wanted to fix her attention on the startling contradiction between His appearance and His claims—on the one hand asserting divine prerogative, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... emparamado;* though the thermometer exposed to the rain sinks only to 21.5 degrees. (* "What an icy cold! I shiver as if I was on the top of the mountains." The provincial word emparamarse can be translated only by a very long periphrasis. Paramo, in Peruvian puna, is a denomination found on all the maps of Spanish America. In the colonies it signifies neither a desert nor a heath, but a mountainous place covered with stunted trees, exposed to the winds, and in which a damp cold perpetually reigns. In the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt |
