ambages, or tour of words, used either when a proper term is not at hand, to express a thing naturally and immediately by it; or when one chooses not to do it, out of respect, or for some other reason. The word comes from circumloquor, "I speak about."

oratory, is the avoiding of something disagreeable or inconvenient to be expressed in direct terms; by intimating the sense thereof in a kind of paraphrase, so conceived as to soften or break the force thereof.

Thus Cicero, unable to deny that Clodius was slain by Milo, owns it, with this circumlocution, "Milo's servants being prevented from assisting their master, who was reported to be killed by Clodius; they, in his absence, and without his privity, or consent, did what every body would expect from their own servants on such an occasion."