"Circumlocutory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have fireworks without gunpowder, and every school-boy knows that gunpowder was only invented in—I haven't got a dictionary of dates handy. Surely we ought to let off fireworks on Roger Bacon's birthday. "They let off fireworks when he was born," say the French in a slyly witty proverb, which is a circumlocutory way of saying that a man won't set the Thames on fire. For "he has not invented gunpowder" is the French equivalent for this idiom of ours, and it is obvious to the meanest intellect that a man whose birth was celebrated by fireworks ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... within a week, by a letter from his mother. This was diffuse and circumlocutory, like the first. But its general sense was clear. If Raymond was thinking of ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... to his circumlocutory courtship, that she has but one tongue, she does not understand this new phrase, and desires him to talk his former language, that is, to talk as ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Unless;—but this unless is very strange Unless indeed she some way could arrange; To gratify her wish, which seemed to vex, And converse be allowed with t'other sex: Hippocrates, howe'er, more plainly speaks, No circumlocutory phrase he seeks. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine |
