"Periphrasis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... economy; and has been, by the cowardice of our old translators, so maimed of its vitality, that the frank Greek assertion of St. Michael's not daring to blaspheme the devil,[96] is tenfold more mischievously deadened and caricatured by their periphrasis of "durst not bring against him a railing accusation," than by Byron's apparently—and only apparently—less reverent description of the manner of angelic encounter for an ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a periphrasis for a chief, that is, Mord. (2) "Earth's offspring," a periphrasis for ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... but Clarissa had not yet learned to know that he who had been the great philosopher and little Lord Chancellor was not to be lightly mentioned. To Stemm the matter had become so serious, that in speaking of books, papers, and documents he would have recourse to any periphrasis rather than mention in his master's hearing the name of the fallen angel. And yet Sir Thomas was always talking to himself about Sir Francis Bacon, and ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... that could be conceived under the marble portico of the Stoics,—so filed and turned, trimmed and tamed, that they never admitted a sentence that could warm the heart, or one that could offend the ear. He had so great a horror of a vulgarism that, like Canning, he would have made a periphrasis of a couple of lines to avoid using the word "cat." It was only in extempore speaking that a ray of his real genius could indiscreetly betray itself. One may judge what labor such a super-refinement of taste would inflict upon a man writing in a language not his own to some distinguished ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... roaring from him, that hilarious mouth of his invited you to share delights. You had needs laugh with him, and he, cursing high and low, beamed all over his face. "To make Baldassare laugh" became a stock periphrasis for the supreme degree of tragedy among his neighbours. About this traitor mouth of his he had a dew of scrubby beard, silvered black; he had bushy eyebrows, hands and arms covered with a black pelt: he was a very hairy man. Also he ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... hoards," etc.—merely a periphrasis for man, and scarcely fitting, except in irony, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the Romans had even an aversion to mention death in express terms, for they disguised its very name by some periphrasis, such as discessit e vita, "he has departed from life;" and they did not say that their friend had died, but that he had lived; vixit! In the old Latin chronicles, and even in the Foedera and other documents of the middle ages, we find the same delicacy ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... speech he unfolds his meaning. This is called Periphrasis. As when he says "Sons of the Achaeans" for Achaeans, and the "Herculean might" ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... perhaps Mrs. Assistant is more highly born than Mrs. Principal and gives herself airs; and the men are drawn in and the servants presently follow. "Church privileges have been denied the keeper's and the assistant's servants," I read in one case, and the eminently Scots periphrasis means neither more nor less than excommunication, "on account of the discordant and quarrelsome state of the families. The cause, when inquired into, proves to be tittle-tattle on both sides." The tender comes round; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 neat and picked—oratio uncta, et bene pasta. But where there is redundancy, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Neot's. Morewood had been to see him, had told without disguise the whole story of his blunder at the dinner-table at Ashwood, had referred to Alexander Quisante's serious illness, and had finally, without apology and without periphrasis, expressed the hope that Alexander Quisante would die. The Dean's rebuke had produced a strenuous effort at justification. Quisante was, the painter pointed out, no doubt a force, but a force essentially ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... is not quite so clear as that translator's work usually is. "One of them all I knew not" is an awkward periphrasis for "I knew none of them." Dante's indignant expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of character, and the prophecy of Scrovegno, that his neighbor Vitaliano, then living, ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... be, as myndgiend wre here, is comparatively rare in original A.-S. literature, but occurs abundantly in translations from the Latin. The periphrasis is ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... to a patron, and to the position that he sought to fill in the circle of that patron's literary retainers. Twenty sonnets, which may for purposes of exposition be entitled 'dedicatory' sonnets, are addressed to one who is declared without periphrasis and without disguise to be a patron of the poet's verse (Nos. xxiii., xxvi., xxxii., xxxvii., xxxviii., lxix., lxxvii.-lxxxvi., c., ci., cvi.) In one of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... large are less virtuous than in other countries. Honi soit qui mal y pense is a motto universally acted on; legs are called legs; and even the most delicate relations and complaints are spoken of and discussed without the slightest attempt at concealment or periphrasis. It is no doubt true, that marriage is far from general among the middle and lower classes; and a woman may live with a man in open concubinage without serious detriment to her character or position, so long ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... "The house is building."'—Wells' 'School Grammar,' p. 148. 'Several other expressions of this sort now and then occur, such as the newfangled and most uncouth solecism "is being done," for the good old English idiom "is doing"—an absurd periphrasis driving out a pointed and pithy turn of the English language.'—'N. A. Review,' quoted by Mr. Wells, p. 148. 'The phrase, "is being built," and others of a similar kind, have been for a few years insinuating themselves into our language; still they are ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... 1904, I), pp. 331 ff.—Graillot is rather inclined to admit a Christian influence, but omnipotentes was used as a liturgic epithet in 288 A. D., and at about the same date Arnobius (VII, 32) made use of the periphrasis omnipotentia numina to designate the Phrygian gods, and he {227} certainly was understood by all. This proves that the use of that periphrasis was general, and that it must have dated back to a much earlier period. As a matter of fact a dedication ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... lasted, consonant in no very under-tone to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, axes, 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 lurking snake among them. There were times, indeed, when we sighed for our more gentleman-like occupation under Stuart. But with change of masters it ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... licentiousness of several weekly papers, which for some months past, have been chiefly employed in barefaced scurrilities against those who are in the greatest trust and favour with the Qu[een], with the first and last letters of their names frequently printed; or some periphrasis describing their station, or other innuendoes, contrived too plain to be mistaken. The consequence of which is, (and it is natural it should be so) that their long impunity hath rendered ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... observation of sagacity and experience, that when one friend has a piece of disagreeable intelligence to disclose to another, it is better to describe it directly, and in simple terms, than to introduce it with that kind of periphrasis and circumlocution, which oftener tends to excite a vague and impatient horror in the reader, than to prepare him to bear his misfortune with decency and fortitude. There are however no rules of ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... 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, acid, ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... his remembrance reaches. And indeed they do use the words IDENTITY and SAME PERSON. Nor will language permit these words to be laid aside, since, if they were, there must be I know not what ridiculous periphrasis substituted in the room of them. But they cannot consistently with themselves mean that the person is really the same. For it is self-evident that the personality cannot be really the same, if, as they expressly ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... brought to me in an undergraduate essay, I should have much to say. The style, with its abstract nouns ('the literal extirpation of a nation is an impossibility'), its padding and periphrasis ('there is every reason to believe' ... 'as far as the male sex is concerned we may feel sure') betrays the loose thought. It begins with 'in short' and proceeds to be long-winded. It commits what even schoolboys know to be a solecism by inviting us to consider three ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch |
