Circumlocution is a large deſcription either to ſette forth a thyng more gorgiouſlie, or els to hyde it, if the eares cannot beare the open ſpeakyng: or when with fewe woordes we cannot open our meanyng, to ſpeake it more largely.
Source: wiktionary
Circumlocution
//ˌsɜːkəmləˈkjuːʃən//
Synonyms for "circumlocution" (83 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (17)
Strong matches (25)
Related words (41)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
More general
4 entriesSynonyms
2 entriesRelated terms
11 entriesderived
7 entriesderived from
1 entriesis a
2 entriesrelated to
7 entriesTranslations
38 translations across 14 languages.
Bulgarian
3 entries- заобикалки noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- иносказание noun (roundabout expression)
- увъртане noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
Finnish
4 entries- jaarittelu noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- kiertely noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- kiertoilmaus noun (roundabout expression)
- pyörittely noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
French
2 entries- circonlocution noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- périphrase noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
German
1 entries- Umschweife noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
Greek
3 entries- περίφραση noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- περίφραση noun (roundabout expression)
- πολυλογία noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
Hungarian
3 entries- kertelés noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- köntörfalazás noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- körülírás noun (roundabout expression)
Italian
3 entries- circonlocuzione noun (roundabout expression)
- giro di parole noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- perifrasi noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
Latin
1 entries- circumlocūtiō noun (roundabout expression)
Persian
2 entries- اطناب noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- درازگویی noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
Portuguese
4 entries- circunlocução noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- circunlocução noun (roundabout expression)
- circunlóquio noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- circunlóquio noun (roundabout expression)
Spanish
4 entries- ambages noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- circunlocución noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- circunlocución noun (roundabout expression)
- circunloquio noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
Swedish
2 entries- omskrivning noun (roundabout expression)
- omsvep noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
Vietnamese
4 entries- giải ngữ noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- giải ngữ noun (roundabout expression)
- ngữ giải thích noun (roundabout or indirect way of speaking)
- ngữ giải thích noun (roundabout expression)
Welsh
1 entries- cylchymadrodd noun (roundabout expression)
Sample sentences
5 total sentences available.
His Majeſty leaves the choice to your ſelf, and requires from you a direct Anſwer without circumlocution or bargaining with him […]
Source: wiktionary
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).
Source: wiktionary
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".
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 5 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.