as in repetition
the use of too many words to express an idea
congressional hearings into the Watergate scandal were marked by an orgy of periphrasis, the expression "at this point in time" being a memorable example
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for periphrasis
Noun
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The dog learns through repetition and rewards to associate smell with a person and follow the scent, building up in distance and the scent’s duration.—
Jan Goldsmith,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
22 May 2025 -
And after 46 days competing, the contest – the largest online chess game ever held, according to Chess.com – ended in a draw after 32 moves when the public forced a threefold repetition in a queen endgame to earn a half-point for either side.—
Ben Morse,
CNN Money,
21 May 2025
Noun
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Nvidia should be using its success around the world to work hard to compete against China in other markets and stop focusing on its diminishing market share in China, especially after Trump gave the company the gift of repelling the AI diffusion rule.—
Dewardric L. McNeal,
CNBC,
29 May 2025
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The color, the pizzazz, the spectacle is what has drawn so many of us to the handiwork of the LLM in a diffusion model, where the program adds noise, prior to de-noising into a novel, coherent result.—
John Werner,
Forbes.com,
29 May 2025
Noun
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Here, instead, she’s swayed by a dead Diana softly squeezing her hand and kindly hinting — the dead Diana is an ace at tactful circumlocution — that now is the time to show a mourning nation some emotion.—
Tom Gliatto,
Peoplemag,
16 Nov. 2023
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By condensing Balzac’s opus to a few paragraphs, Barthelme was having a laugh not just at his predecessor’s genteel circumlocution—his tendency to describe buildings and manufacturing procedures and family trees in lavish detail—but also at the conventions of novelistic mimesis itself.—
Giles Harvey,
The New York Review of Books,
23 Apr. 2020
Noun
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But Sieh is the standout, emitting a complex blend of sardonic acceptance, cynical verbosity and submerged emotional longing.—
Chris Jones,
Chicago Tribune,
14 May 2025
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Coogler can let his characters’ verbosity get the better of story momentum.—
Michael Phillips,
Chicago Tribune,
15 Apr. 2025
Noun
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Just as the limitless space of web text tempts writers to indulge their logorrhea, the blinking, ever-transmuting, cartoonish interface of web browsers prevents would-be readers from paying attention to anything for longer than about 7 seconds.—
Barton Swaim,
WSJ,
19 Sep. 2022
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Nor has Musk kept his Twitter logorrhea in check in other respects.—
Michael Hiltzik,
Los Angeles Times,
28 Apr. 2022
Noun
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On their website, the three yellow stripes are prominently featured on the website under the Black Lives Matter wordage, and used on their social media accounts.—
Amritpal Kaur Sandhu-Longoria,
USA TODAY,
29 Mar. 2023
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Reached by the Union-Tribune Wednesday morning, Lindsey differed with McGillis’ wordage.—
Don Norcross,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
22 Mar. 2023
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Cite this Entry
“Periphrasis.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/periphrasis. Accessed 2 Jun. 2025.
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