PERIPHRASIS, or circumlocution (formed from περι, about, and φράω, I speak), in Rhetoric, a circuitous form of words, much affected by orators, to avoid common and trite modes of expression. The periphrasis is of great use on some occasions; and it is often necessary, to make things be conceived which it is not proper to name. It is sometimes polite to suppress the names, and only to intimate or allude to them. These turns of expression are also particularly serviceable in oratory; for the sublime admitting of no direct citations, there must be a compass taken to insinuate the authors whose authority is borrowed. A periphrasis, by turning round a proper name in order to make it understood, amplifies and raises the discourse; but care must be taken that it be not too much swelled, nor extended mal à propos, in which case it becomes flat and languid.