a. [? f. CIRCUMLOCUTION or its source: see -ORY.] Marked by circumlocution, roundabout, periphrastic.
1659. [O. Walker], Instruct. Oratory (1682), 31 (T.). Circumlocutory. That not to be expressed in many words, which may be as fully in one.
1741. Pope, &c. Mart. Scriblerus, viii. in Misc. (1746), II. 158 (R.). Periphrase … being a diffus’d circumlocutory manner of expressing a known idea.
1841. Thackeray, Crit. Rev., Wks. 1886, XXIII. 180. Are we bound … to speak of humbug only in a circumlocutory way?
1870. Jevons, Elem. Logic, xxxiii. 289. It will … oblige us to use a circumlocutory phrase.
