circumlocution

English

Etymology

From Latin circumlocūtiō (“the act of speaking around; circumlocution, periphrasis”). By surface analysis, circum- (“around”) +‎ locution (“talk”), thus "getting around (a problem) in speaking or writing". Probably a calque of Ancient Greek περίφρασις (períphrasis, “periphrasis”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌsɜːkəmləˈkjuːʃən/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌsɝkəmləˈkjuʃən/
• Rhymes: -uːʃən
• Hyphenation: cir‧cum‧lo‧cu‧tion

Noun

circumlocution (countable and uncountable, plural circumlocutions)

1. (uncountable) A roundabout or indirect way of speaking; thus:
   1. (uncountable) Unnecessary use of extra words to express an idea, such as a pleonastic phrase (sometimes driven by an attempt at emphatic clarity) or a wordy substitution (the latter driven by euphemistic intent, pedagogic intent, or sometimes loquaciousness alone).
   2. (uncountable) Necessary use of a phrase to circumvent either a vocabulary fault (of speaker or listener) or a lexical gap, either monolingually or in translation.
      • 1997, Hansjörg Bittner, The Metrical Structure of Free Verse (PhD Thesis)‎, retrieved 2021-04-21:

        It may seem quite straightforward to render line 15 metrically regular by means of a grammatical trick: "the style as bright as soul". However, the stylistic feature of the adjectival compound does not occur in isolation but is employed again in the following line, "dem Staubfaden himmelswüst", where a grammatical circumlocution in translation would be metrically disadvantageous. Both compounds, "seelenhell" as well as "himmelswüst", should therefore be translated as compounds. When Michael Hamburger remarks that German "lends itself to the formation of compound words in a way that English does not" (in Celan 1988: 24), he probably refers to nouns such as "Türspalt" or "Algenteilchen".

      • 2010, Rebecca A. Giggs, The Rise of the Edge: New Thresholds of the Ecological Uncanny, and Inside Albatrosses (Fictions for Strange Weather) (PhD Thesis)‎, retrieved 2021-04-21:

        Linguistic horror vacui again, and lacuna: the blank part of a manuscript where the ink runs off the papyrus, and lexically the word missing from one language that must be bridged with circumlocution in translation.

      A technical word, such as hyperkalemia or hypoallergenic, can be glossed for general audiences with a circumlocution, such as "high potassium level" or "less likely to cause allergies" (respectively).

2. (countable) An instance of such usage; a roundabout expression, whether an inadvisable one or a necessary one.

Synonyms

• ambages
• periphrasis

Derived terms

Related terms

• pleonasm

Translations

See also

• beat around the bush
• go around the houses
• euphemism
• mince words, mince matters
• equivocation (the use of expressions susceptible of a double signification, possibly intentionally and with the aim of misleading)
• evasive (tending to avoid speaking openly or making revelations about oneself)
• prevarication (evasion of the truth; deceit, evasiveness)
• hedge (to avoid verbal commitment)
• waffle (to speak or write vaguely and evasively; to speak or write at length without any clear point or aim)