• (British, America, Canada) IPA: /pəˈɹɪfɹəsɪs/

periphrasis

1. The use of a longer expression instead of a shorter one with a similar meaning, for example "I am going to" instead of "I will".
2. (linguistics) Expressing a grammatical meaning (such as a tense) using a syntactic construction rather than morphological marking.

   Language learners sometimes use periphrases like "did go" where a native speaker would use "went".

3. (rhetoric) The substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name (a species of circumlocution).
   • [1835, L[arret] Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, OCLC 1062248511 ↗, page 37 ↗:

     Periphrasis a single thought expands,
     And uses many words for what but few demands.]

4. (rhetoric) The use of a proper name as a shorthand to stand for qualities associated with it.

• beat around the bush
• circumlocution

• periphrase
• periphrastic

• French: périphrase
• Italian: perifrasi
• Portuguese: perífrase
• Russian: перифра́з
• Spanish: perífrasis