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More "Circumlocution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... immediately to a house which I found belonged to a Mr Hans Ringer, an attorney, who had charge of several plantations in that flourishing neighbourhood. The doctor and he, it was evident, were on most intimate terms, for on our arrival, without any circumlocution, the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... the elder, without any circumlocution, "laces have been missed from your department, and suspicion rests on you. I hope you can ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... you also to send a few lines to Kurnberger to tell him that I have given you his manuscript? It would be discourteous if I were to leave him without any answer, and, as I cannot say anything further to him, we should save useless circumlocution if you would be so good as to correspond ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... what I believe to be duty," she said. She wished that, by some circumlocution or some tenderness in the tone, she could have softened the words that she spoke, but all her forces had to be rallied to utter the decision, and there was no power left to qualify the bare words which sounded to Millard hard and cruel. A suspicion crossed his mind that Phillida ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... omission or the presentation of an argument in so fragmentary or slanted a fashion that Collins's "Enemies" could debate neither his implications nor his conclusions. At other times he used this artful circumlocution to create his favorite mask, that of the pious Christian devoted to scripture or of the moralist perplexed by the divisions among the orthodox clergy. Finally, his rhetoric was shaped by deistic predecessors who used sarcasm ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... it is that each should guard his lips, chasten his pen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense, circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to complicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of plain-dealing does more for the salvation of the world than ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... further circumlocution, sir, and in order that we may fully understand each other, I will say at once, that we ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... happen; and the best that we can hope is to remedy them with as small delay as possible. I will not deny that I fear you have made a mistake and honoured my poor house by inadvertence; for, to speak openly, I cannot at all remember your appearance. Let me put the question without unnecessary circumlocution - between gentlemen of honour a word will suffice - Under whose roof do ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fate—clear, express, and emphatic—is fully set forth. The Koran resorts to no euphemism or circumlocution in declaring it. Thus, in Sura lxxiv. 3, 4, we read: "Thus doth God cause to err whom he pleases, and directeth whom he pleases." Again, Sura xx. 4, says: "The fate of every man have we bound round his neck." As is well known, fatalism as a practical doctrine of life has passed into ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... obliged to make use of circumlocution, to express the nature of the several substances which constitute our atmosphere, having provisionally used the terms of respirable and noxious, or non-respirable parts of the air. But the investigations I mean to undertake require a more direct mode of expression; ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... to the most depraved of men. Principles which the most hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted accomplice, or avow, without the disguise of some palliating sophism, even to his own mind, are professed without the slightest circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dashes, made by a brush dipped in India ink on a shred of flimsy Chinese paper. It may teem with abuse and ridicule, but you must pocket all that, and produce it on calling again, or your shirts and collars go into the Chinese Circumlocution Wash-house Office. It is very difficult getting one's clothes back if the ticket be lost—very. Hip Tee now dabs a duplicate of your ticket in a long book, and all is over. You will call on Saturday night for your linen. You do so. There is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Alick agreed to this, and calling Jos, begged him to open the subject to the pirate captain, which he did with no little circumlocution; and very considerable departure from the real facts of the case, notwithstanding Jack's charge to him to adhere to them. The Malay had two reasons for this. In the first place, he had got so completely ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's lives. They would be happier if he were dead. They could easier do without his services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... corridor he ran across the President, who was looking for him. With much courtesy and circumlocution he was told the thing he had been waiting to hear: the board, likewise, had discovered that Saint Margaret's had suddenly grown too small to hold both the Senior Surgeon and himself. Strangely enough, this troubled ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... conference with the State's attorney, and he came up to Hatboro' the next day, to see Putney on his father's behalf, and to express the wish of his family that Mr. Putney would let them do anything he could think of for his clients. He got his message out bunglingly, with embarrassed circumlocution and repetition; but this was what it came ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... tact. Very free criticism of the master of the house, of his sins of omission and commission alike, were permissible in the Chapel-Room and in the presence of her late companions. The subject, unhappily, had called for too frequent mention, by now, for any circumlocution to be incumbent in the discussion of it. But here, in the brooding quiet of this bedchamber, and in Lady Calmady's presence, all that was changed. Trenchant statements of opinion, words of blame, were proscribed. The sinner, if spoken of at all, must be spoken ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... is [Greek: merops], or a word-divider; and he often carries this propensity so far as to divide words where there is no corresponding division of thoughts or of things. This is a very convenient practice, in so far as the ordinary business of life is concerned: for it saves much circumlocution, much expenditure of sound. But it runs the risk of making great havoc with scientific thinking; and there cannot be a doubt that it has helped to confirm psychology in its worst errors, by leading the unwary thinker to suppose that he has got before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... small degree an authority—some one who can talk a little English, and most of them can. I might offer my man a cigar, and praise his show a bit, and then tell him how I want to tell the world all about him; how I want to see how they live, not so briefly, you understand. The circumlocution office is as much in vogue in the Orient as, according to our mutual friend Dickens, it is in old England. Well, when he fully understands that I admire their life and manners, and want to live it as well as write it, I begin to bid. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... "fears" that one has stepped aside from the narrow path of duty, when one knows perfectly well that one has done so, is a ridiculous half-dodging of the truth; let me dismiss from my service such a cowardly circumlocution, and squarely say that I neglected the Cowpens during certain days which now followed. Nay, more; I totally deserted them. Although I feel quite sure that to discover one is a real king's descendant must bring an exultation of no mean order to the ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... believed what disorder, what helplessness, and what incapacity rule paramount in the expedition of any current business in the strictly military part of the War Department. It is worse than any imaginable red-tape and circumlocution. And all this, being considered a speciality and a technicality, is in the exclusive hands of the adjutant general, a master spirit among the West Pointers. Generally, all relating to the thus celebrated ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... obtruded themselves into the slow mind of his good German host; but, whatever the cause, the boarding-house keeper beckoned the young man into his private room and started on the subject without any circumlocution. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... in council, as I had desired, and I then told them that the men who had taken part in shooting the woman would have to be delivered up for punishment. They were very stiff with me at the interview, and with all that talent for circumlocution and diplomacy with which the Indian is lifted, endeavored to evade my demands and delay any conclusion. But I was very positive, would hear of no compromise whatever, and demanded that my terms be at once ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... means of words which are names of concrete objects—because' (p. 426)—'we have no other convenient and compact mode of speaking. Most attributes, and nearly all large bundles of attributes, have no names of their own. We can only name them by a circumlocution. We are accustomed to speak of attributes, not by names given to themselves, but by means of the names which they give to the objects they are attributes of.' 'All our ordinary judgments' (p. 428) 'are in Comprehension only; Extension ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... different kinds of possessors of the same degree, the Grand Lodge of England has long since distinguished them as "virtual" and as "actual" Past Masters. The terms are sufficiently explicit, and have the advantage of enabling us to avoid circumlocution, and I ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... it. Above all, if you have the least reluctance to ask this of Mr. Irving, you must allow me to impose it as a condition of my request that you will not do it; or if Mr. Irving is reluctant to give the letters, do not undertake to tell me so with any circumlocution, for I understand all about the delicacy of these Transatlantic connections. I only fear that the very length of this letter will convey to you an undue impression of the importance which I give to the subject of it. Pray construe it not so, but set it ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... very weedy, Sir! in worthless phrases, 125 A sedulous eschewer of the popular And the colloquial—one who seeketh dignity I' th' paths of circumlocution! It would have Surpris'd you tho', to hear how nat'rally He squeak'd when Curio had him ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... mean, Captain Hazzard,—no, sir, der was no circumlocution ob de objec', in fac', ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... they see, not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish minister makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Clarendon's tongue, if it had been uttered in a softer tone, and if she had paid a little more attention to times and seasons: but she held it the sacred duty of sincerity to tell a friend her faults as soon as seen, and without circumlocution. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... course, very considerate to the bereaved husband. He tried by circumlocution to get at the point he wanted, namely, Mrs. Hazeldene's mental condition lately. Mr. Hazeldene seemed loath to talk about this. No doubt he had been warned as to the existence of the small bottle ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... 'agitation and attention' which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying 'some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to the distant West': a work on Professor Teufelsdroeckh 'were undoubtedly welcome to the Family, the National, or any other of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... no one has designs on your daughter; we evidently find her charming, but are by no means in love with her. With much precaution and circumlocution I gently proceeded to question Count Larinski on the state of his affairs, about which he never has opened his mouth. He frowned. I did not lose courage. I offered him this place of professor of the Slavonian languages of which the abbe had again spoken. I saw in an instant that ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... in which Mark Heathcote was wont to pass those portions of his time that were not occupied in his secret strivings for the faith, or in exercise without, while superintending the laborers in the fields. With some little circumlocution, which was intended to mask his real motives, the agent of the King announced his intention to take his ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... river was a great school for the study of life's broader philosophies and humors: philosophies that avoid vague circumlocution and aim at direct and sure results; humors of the rugged and vigorous sort that in Europe are known as "American" and in America are known as "Western." Let us be thankful that Mark Twain's school was no less than it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... on the Richardson-McFarland case, I feel disinclined to be associated with her in editorial work. I want to say this very gently; but I have no time for circumlocution.... ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... not in this respect far behind them. It is true that the drinking of wine is forbidden by the tenets of their religion; but in respect of champagne, they understand how to evade this commandment by christening it by the harmless name of "sparkling lemonade," a circumlocution which of course did not in the slightest counteract its exhilarating effects. The Indians who were less proof against the effects of alcohol were much more quickly intoxicated than their new ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... circumlocution, beating about the bush; ceremony, everything pertaining to a certain ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... which he half-declared himself to be joined in affectionate relations to his father, caused him a world of trouble. But he could find no term for expressing, without a circumlocution which was disagreeable to him, exactly that position of feeling towards his father which really belonged to him. He would have written "yours with affection," or "yours with deadly enmity," or "yours with respect," or "yours with most profound indifference," exactly in accordance with the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... and one thousand scalping knives were issued not many years ago as civilizing agencies by this department. An instance given us last night by our friend from across the water, shows that the English circumlocution office is a greyhound compared with our Indian office. I remember a similar story that Bright Eyes told in Boston ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... always blunt. He has a way of getting right at the heart of things with everyone except Bolum. For Isaac, he regards circumlocution as necessary, taking the ground that with him the quantity and not the quality of the words counts. So when he had silenced the company, and with a sweep of his cane had driven them into close order about the walls, he said: "Mr. Thomas is anxious ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... now turn the whole Sentence a little more at large, that we may express one Sentence, by a Circumlocution of many Words. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... 2: The thing to be hoped for is included in the definition of faith, because the proper object of faith, is something not apparent in itself. Hence it was necessary to express it in a circumlocution by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... readers, and has that greatness of trust and reliance which compels popularity. He confides in the reader, and speaks privily with him, keeping nothing back. And in return the reader has great confidence in him, that he tells no lies, and reads his story with indulgence, as if it were the circumlocution of a child, but often discovers afterwards that he has spoken with more directness and economy of words than a ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... supreme struggle, thus far, of his life. Visiting, three weeks later, the home of his relative, General Mitchell, in Columbus, he was serenaded by the Hayes Club of the capital city, and, in response to their calls, foreshadowed the great issues of the approaching campaign. Without circumlocution, he said: ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... as they flew. He knocked at Diana's door, where he was informed that the mistress of the house was absent. More than official gravity accompanied the announcement. Her address was unknown. Sir Lukin thought it now time to tell his wife. He began with a hesitating circumlocution, in order to prepare her mind for bad news. She divined immediately that it concerned Diana, and forcing him to speak to the point, she had the story jerked out to her in a sentence. It stopped ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office, I would seek it in the common experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention the unimportant fact of my having done that violence to good manners, in the days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Inquiry at Chelsea. If ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to bring him to the cottage of the old lady, and her voice in very friendly tenor commanded him to enter. Without useless circumlocution, yet without bluntness, the old man broached the subject; and, without urging any of the isolated facts of which he was possessed, and by which his suspicions were awakened, he dwelt simply upon the dangers which might result from such a degree of confidence as was given to the stranger. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... letter must be short, so I smother what remnant of modesty I have, covering nothing with the veil of circumlocution, but telling you plainly what I know you want to hear. I love only you and am true to you in every thought, word, and deed. I long for you, yearn for you, pray for you, and be your fortune good or ill, I would share ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... honestly desirous of arriving at the truth. Still the King did not like to propose directly to his brother in law the simple choice, apostasy or dismissal: but, three days after the conference, Barillon waited on the Treasurer, and, with much circumlocution and many expressions of friendly concern, broke the unpleasant truth. "Do you mean," said Rochester, bewildered by the involved and ceremonious phrases in which the intimation was made, "that, if I do not turn Catholic, the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pleased with this circumlocution of "nothing" that he burst out laughing, and, wishing to immortalize ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... it as a satire on Sudbury or a satire on Ipswich; he meant it as a satire on England. The Eatanswill election is not a joke against Eatanswill; it is a joke against elections. If the satire is merely local, it practically loses its point; just as the "Circumlocution Office" would lose its point if it were not supposed to be a true sketch of all Government offices; just as the Lord Chancellor in "Bleak House" would lose his point if he were not supposed to be symbolic and representative of all Lord Chancellors. The whole moral meaning would ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... undefined, unclassifiable mixture. Eastern farm-hand and Western ranchman, prospector, who knows what? His real language is in his eye and his rare, pure smile. And just as his countenance expresses his thoughts without circumlocution or attempt at effect, so his body informs his clothing. Wind and rain have moulded his hat to his head, his shoes grip the ground like paws; his buckskins have a surface like a cast after Rodin. They are repousseed by the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... not think for the orchestra, his thoughts took always the form of the pianoforte language; his thinking became paralysed when he made use of another medium of expression. Still, there have been critics who thought differently. The Polish composer Sowinski declared without circumlocution that Chopin "wrote admirably for the orchestra." Other countrymen of his dwelt at greater length, and with no less enthusiasm, on what is generally considered a weak point in the master's equipment. A Paris correspondent of the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik (1834) remarked a propos ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Pepper Burns. "I don't really mean to be, but the only way I can find out the things I need to know is to ask straight questions. I never could stand circumlocution. If you want that, Cooly; if you want what are called 'tactful' methods, you'll have to go to some other man. What I mean by asking you that one is to prove to you that though you may have something to do, you have no job to work at. As it happens you haven't even what most other rich men have, ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... sat poring over his law book, Captain Morton came in and after the Captain's usual circumlocution he said: ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... a little circumlocution, discovered when the birthday would come, and told Marie; and Marie began straightway to go back and forth in the village, with ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... in all ages been considered as the most wonderful and most dreadful operation of supernatural agency, enquires of the spectre, in the most emphatic terms, why he breaks the order of nature, by returning from the dead; this he asks in a very confused circumlocution, confounding in his fright the soul and body. Why, says he, have thy bones, which with due ceremonies have been intombed in death, in the common state of departed mortals, burst the folds in which they were embalmed? Why has the tomb, in which ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... France went to ruin in spite of this array of documents; dissertations stood in place of action; a million of reports were written every year; bureaucracy was enthroned! Records, statistics, documents, failing which France would have been ruined, circumlocution, without which there could be no advance, increased, multiplied, and grew majestic. From that day forth bureaucracy used to its own profit the mistrust that stands between receipts and expenditures; it degraded the administration ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... nature as he saw them, the reader must put away his notions of refinement and delicacy. He must be prepared to be entertained by blows, licentious assaults, a tub of hog's blood thrown by a clergyman, coarse practical jokes, foul talk, all put before him without disguise or circumlocution. As he follows Parson Adams, Joseph, and Fanny in their journey, he must always be ready for a fight. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... it to a committee your prospect of getting it done is diminished and it grows less if you enlarge your committee. By the time you have got a group of committees, independent of one another and working at cross purposes, you have got Dickens's famous Circumlocution Office, where the great object in life was "how ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... is apt to occasion some obscurity and confusion, and create in us wrong ideas; for language being accommodated to the common notions and prejudices of men, it is scarce possible to deliver the naked and precise truth without great circumlocution, impropriety, and (to an unwary reader) seeming contradictions; I do therefore once for all desire whoever shall think it worth his while to understand what I have written concerning vision, that he would not stick in this or that phrase, or manner of expression, but candidly collect ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... door opening on the Rue Cardinet, he went up unhindered. In the drawing room upstairs Zoe, who was polishing the bronzes, stood dumfounded at sight of him, and not knowing how to stop him, she began with much circumlocution, informing him that M. Venot, looking utterly beside himself, had been searching for him since yesterday and that he had already come twice to beg her to send Monsieur to his house if Monsieur arrived at Madame's ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... idea is also to be found in Lloyd's State Worthies, where speaking of Roger Ascham, he is characterised as "an honest man,—none being more able for, yet none more averse to, that circumlocution and contrivance wherewith some men shadow their main drift and purpose. Speech was made to open man to man, and not to hide him; to promote commerce, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... of words and phrases is that which is termed circumlocution, a going around the bush when there is no occasion for it,—save to ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... balanced in a pair of logical and rhetorical scales of the most sensitive kind; and he never perpetrated the atrocity of ending a sentence with a monosyllable, or using the same word twice within the same five lines, choosing always some judicious method of circumlocution to obviate reiteration. Poor man! in the pride of his unspotted purity, he little knew what a humiliation fate had prepared for him. It happened to him to have to state how Theodore Beza, or some contemporary of his, went to sea ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... suppose we are here to do something, to accomplish something. If we are only here to make speeches, and not to arrive at conclusions, our mission is useless. The greater portion of the debate hitherto has been made up of set speeches, all like the circumlocution office in one of Dickens' novels, showing "how not to do it." I am not in favor of pursuing this course any longer. Let us talk the subject over like business men, in a sensible way, and then come to a vote. I think we may do something ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Cambridge. The hint had been somewhat superfluous; but the question remained, what was necessary? With a view of getting some light on this delicate subject we paid a visit the next evening to our former friends and schoolmates, whose advice was conveyed with a masterly circumlocution that impressed us both. There are some things that may not be discussed directly, and the conduct of life at a modern university—which is a reflection of life in the greater world—is one of these. Perry Blackwood ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this was meant for Miss Bentley, though it was spoken to herself; and Miss Bentley seemed to take the same view of the fact. She said: "We needn't use any circumlocution with Mrs. March, mother. She knows just how the affair stands. You can say whatever you wish, though I don't know why you should wish to say anything. You have made your own terms with us, and we are keeping them to the letter. What more can you ask? Do you want me to break with ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... pronouncement that "the mass of a Christian congregation are about as innocent as men and women can well be in a world where natural temptations are so rife, and so many social adjustments discountenance heroic saintliness" [3]—the latter a truly admirable feat of circumlocution. And sometimes, as we have seen, sin and evil are themselves in essence negated—generally in virtue of some pseudo-philosophic or pseudo-scientific "doctrine of a universe"—as when we read that "in a universe . . . there cannot be any room for independent and creative wills, actually ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... was to escape the bother of personally superintending an insignificant account. His circumlocution was a suave way of stating that he had done all that could be expected of a neighbor and benevolent friend, and that the ordinary relation of broker and customer ought now be established. As for Littleton, he perceived that he was not free to retire from the market on the profits of friendly ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... there's no need of circumlocution and feminine wiles when you want anything of me, Princess. You have but to speak, and, as the Frenchman said, 'If it is possible, it shall be done: if it is impossible, I can only regret that I can't do it.' What do you want ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... account of himself is shameless in its avowal of his cowardice, and prepares Eli for the worst. But note how he speaks gently and with a certain dignity, crushing down his anxiety,—'How went the matter, my son?' Then, with no merciful circumlocution or veiling, out comes the whole dismal ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Browne, though he gave less disturbance to our structures in phraseology, yet poured in a multitude of exotick words; many, indeed, useful and significant, which, if rejected, must be supplied by circumlocution, such as commensality, for the state of many living at the same table; but many superfluous, as a paralogical, for an unreasonable doubt; and some so obscure, that they conceal his meaning rather than explain it, as arthritical ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... merchant, without any ceremony or circumlocution, answered, that though he was ignorant of the nature of his offence, he was very certain, that it must have been something very flagrant that could irritate his niece to such a degree, against a person for whom ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... promise, and would so arrange it that Jerusalem should recover its lost dignity, and the whole people be gathered unto one body." But this explanation must be rejected on philological grounds. [Hebrew: mmlkt] is status constr.; the [Hebrew: l] serves, therefore, only as a circumlocution of the genitive; and it is not admissible to supply the Verb Substant. To this, moreover, there must be added the reference [Pg 464] to what precedes. The dominion over the daughter of Jerusalem is to come to the tower which commands the daughter of Zion, not, by any means, to the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... for them; indeed, it is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling about his person: he had half a million of eager testimonies to this idea. Who was to tell him the truth?—Only in the last years of his life did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution, that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the exceeding bitter cry: "We must strike them! We must never let them pass us again!" On the thirtieth he was horrified at getting from Beauregard (who was then between Richmond and Petersburg) a telegram which showed that the Confederate Government was busy with the circumlocution office in Richmond while the enemy was thundering at the gate. "War Department must determine when and what troops to order from here." Lee immediately answered: "If you cannot determine what troops you can spare, the Department cannot. The result of your delay ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... being usually clothed in a garment of pure white calico or fine muslin. Blue, being the colour of mourning, may not be worn in his presence, neither the name of death pronounced in his hearing. This circumstance is usually expressed by some circumlocution, as that such a person has sacrificed himself at the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... arrange it with the Circumlocution Office!" exclaimed the President. "I'm surprised at you, Huntingdon! You know what the budget and red tape of Washington does to a temperament like Miss Allen's. On the other hand, here is my friend, who would give her absolutely ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... kind of interference is very common where the husband is a man of broad humor—one who calls a spade a spade, with no circumlocution about an agricultural implement. The wife of such a man is generally one of the ultra-refined kind, according to the odd law of compensation which regulates so much of human action, and thinks herself obliged to stand as the enduring ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Spinoza, Bishop Berkeley, were once clothed with a "brief authority;" but Berkeley ended his metaphysical theory with a treatise on the healing properties of tar-water, and Hegel was an inveterate snuff-taker. The circumlocution and cold categories of Kant fail to improve the conditions of mortals, morally, spiritually, or physically. Such miscalled metaphysical systems are reeds shaken by the wind. Compared with the inspired wisdom and infinite meaning of the Word of Truth, they are as moonbeams to the sun, ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... fallen on an excellent object. Thick lips, a narrow forehead, and prominent cheek-bones suggested a material nature that would hesitate at nothing which would satisfy his carnal appetites, so Gurn decided that further circumlocution was so much waste of time, and that he might safely come to the point. He laid his hand familiarly on ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... six ships which Mr. Welles says have been in pursuit of me—viz., the Powhattan, the Niagara, the San Jacinto, the Iroquois, the Keystone State, and the Richmond—the Ino and the Dacotah are also employed in this fruitless business. We are fairly in the hands of the circumlocution office. I suppose they are telegraphing Madrid. The greatest excitement prevails all over Europe to learn the result of the English demand for the Commissioners. The general impression is, that the Yankees will give them up, and that there will be no war. The packet ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... Parliamentary report ought to be—calm, perspicuous, and decided. There is no circumlocution nor ambiguity of expression here. After a patient investigation into the whole question, and a minute examination of enemies as well as friends, the Lords arrived at the opinion, that the existing banking system ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... without the smallest circumlocution. His voice was low, in keeping with the scene, but the words dropped with a sharp distinctness into the other's heart like grains of sand that pricked the skin before they smothered him. Caution ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... missionaries find a word to express the idea of God. Manitou and Oki meant anything endowed with supernatural powers, from a snake-skin or a greasy Indian conjurer up to Manabozho and Jouskeha. The priests were forced to use a circumlocution,—'the great chief of men,' or 'he who lives in the sky.'" Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. "The Algonquins used no oaths, for their language supplied none; doubtless because their mythology had no beings sufficiently distinct to swear ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... we must go up in our searching from external obedience all alongst, till we arrive at the inward fountain of Christ dwelling in us by faith, and then have ye found true religion indeed. Now, ye may think possibly, we have used too much circumlocution: what is all this to the present purpose? Yes, very much. Ye shall find the Lord rejecting this people's public worship and solemn ordinances upon these three grounds,—either they did not join with them the observation of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... leaked out, but the whole thing was known in the village before a week had passed, with the result that fifteen women visited the vicar, one after the other, and after much circumlocution intimated that "If so be as 'e would be so kind, they'd be glad if 'e'd 'int to the ladies as they 'adn't nearly wore out last Christmas petticoat, and, if it were true wot they'd 'eard as they was talkin' of givin' summat different, might Mrs Mustoe, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... or whether it contains any clear and real idea, it shows us nothing but what we must certainly know before, whether such a proposition be either made by, or proposed to us. Indeed, that most general one, WHAT IS, IS, may serve sometimes to show a man the absurdity he is guilty of, when, by circumlocution or equivocal terms, he would in particular instances deny the same thing of itself; because nobody will so openly bid defiance to common sense, as to affirm visible and direct contradictions in plain ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... is committed for trial on the charge of murder. His best witness, Granfer, who had seen and spoken with him in the village at the moment of the alleged murder, greatly discredited his evidence by his circumlocution and stupidity, purposely affected to set the court in a roar. He admitted that Everard gave him money and tobacco. Judkins swore that at three o'clock Lee told him Everard had asked Alma to meet him at dusk that evening in the wood, and that he—Lee—meant ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... think best. All livings are connected with the seminary, but they are all transferable. The prelate here puts clearly and categorically the question of the transfer of livings. In his measures there is neither hesitation nor circumlocution. He does not seek to deceive the sovereign to whom he is about to submit his regulation. For him, in the present condition of New France, there can be no question of fixed livings; the priests must be by right removable, and subject to recall at the will of the bishop; and, as is fitting ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... command of their sovereign, were disposed to deal very plainly. They informed the Dutch diplomatist, with very little circumlocution, that if the republic wished assistance from France she was to pay a heavy price for it. Not a pound of flesh only, but the whole body corporate, was to be surrendered if its destruction was to be averted by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... confidential and anonymous notes. The hatred of the revolution pervaded every line, every word. The writers did not dare to propose plainly the revocation of the Charter, and the abolition of the new institutions; but they declared without any circumlocution, that the dynasty of the Bourbons would never be secure with the existing laws; and that it was necessary, to distrust and get rid of the men of the revolution. More effectually to know and persecute these, M. de Blacas had caused to be disinterred from the archives of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... shadow of circumlocution, and in a matter-of-fact way, as if all respect for the peculiar genius of the house of Pole had vanished: "I sent for you to talk a word or two about this woman, who, I see, troubles you a little. I'm sorry she's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... habit; and as it did so, the whispers as rapidly changed into plain, open speech, and the words which were interchanged lost their original air of confidential mysteriousness, until, finally, people told each other without very much circumlocution that there was, in their opinion, more in the strange deaths of Tiahuana and Motahuana than met the eye. And if they were asked to express themselves more plainly they reminded each other that the two ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... it. Colonel Bent had decided upon a price—sixteen thousand dollars—but the representatives of the War Department offered only twelve thousand, which, of course, Bent refused. Negotiations were still pending, when the colonel, growing tired of the red-tape and circumlocution of the authorities, and while in a mad mood, removed all his valuables from the structure, excepting some barrels of gunpowder, and then deliberately set fire to the old landmark. When the flames reached ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... take the place of these pronouns. Such at least seems to be the usage of the ko[u]dan writers, and in the present book the example has been followed, as far as possible. In a few instances the use of a pronoun will relieve the strain of a lengthy sentence or involved circumlocution in the western tongue. At times the closer style can be abandoned—as in the direct narration of the Tale of the Baryufu Kwannon. So also with the translations of the gidayu and the ko[u]dan attached. These are for recitation. In the original the pronoun is rarely ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... and that, whoever the other party was, I am convinced the Government got the best of the bargain. But long before this occurred, I had fulfilled my promise to Robert; for as soon as my patient recovered strength of memory enough to make his answer trustworthy, I asked, without any circumlocution,— ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... medium, for there is such a thing as being too systematic. There are men and women, for instance, who put away things so carefully that they can never find them again. It is too much like the "red-tape" formality at Washington, and Mr. Dick-ens' "Circumlocution ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Francine? Alban tried to make the discovery. Polite circumlocution would be evidently thrown away on Mrs. Ellmother. "Is your new mistress one of the right sort?" he ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... great partiality for the use of the passive voice, and avoid the active when the passive can be used. The Bakele verb delights in the active voice, and will avoid the passive even by a considerable circumlocution. The Benga takes an intermediate position in this respect, and uses the active and passive very much as we ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... intending travellers to this, the lordliest of Tuscan hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without circumlocution what does not appear upon the time-tables of the line from Empoli to Rome. Montepulciano has a station; but this railway station is at the distance of at least an hour and a half's drive from the mountain ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... but I can't bear the weight of it any longer. I can't give you all the details, but you may rely on what I say being correct." He looked away from Larry out of the window. The car was running swiftly up the smooth levels of the long avenue; he knew he had no time for circumlocution. "My father told me," he began, "that in some way, between himself and the Major a lot of money had passed. The Major was greatly pressed for money—he wasn't getting his rents, and there were many liabilities—my ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... interrogatories by propounding the question, who the gentleman was to whom I had the honour of addressing myself, and under what authority I was considered amenable to his inquisition. "Answer my enquiries, Sir," he replied, "without the impertinency of idle circumlocution, otherwise I shall consider you as a spy, and my provost-marshal shall instantly perform on your person the duties of his office!" I now resorted to my letters; I had no other alternative between existence ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... York, he wrote three pamphlets which were marvels of circumlocution, as far as reform was concerned, and masterpieces of political writing, as far as his own interests were concerned. He had borrowed freely, and without credit, from the speeches of every orator from Everett to Choate, and when he delivered the manuscripts to Mirabelle, and went off on his solitary ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... curiosity had been aroused by what Master Pearson had said, gave the required promise, and without further circumlocution his companion proposed to him a scheme which Jack would have been the wiser had he at the first refused to ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... suppression, manipulated by Metternich with consummate skill in the interest of Austria against Prussia and against German confidence in the sincerity and trustworthiness of the Prussian government, the reaction had by arrests, prosecutions, circumlocution-office delays, banishments, and an elaborate system of espionage, for the most part silenced opposition and saved, not the state, but, at any rate, the status quo. This "success" had incidentally cost Germany the presence and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... share in the ceremony, as he had already become an object of suspicion to them. From that day gloomy forebodings of disaster grew ever more prevalent on every side. People even went so far as to say, with little attempt at circumlocution, that the execution of Blum had been an act of friendship on the part of the Archduchess Sophia to her sister, the Queen of Saxony, for during his agitation in Leipzig the man had made himself both hated and feared. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... eloquent, obloquy, circumlocution, elocution; (2) magniloquent, grandiloquent, ventriloquism, interlocutor, locutory, allocution. (For related log and Ology words see above under Prying ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... do is to blurt out, without form or ceremony, all the criticisms and corrections which may occur to him in the many details of household life? He would not dare to speak with as little preface, apology, or circumlocution, to his business-manager, to his butcher, or his baker. When Enthusius was a bachelor, he never criticized the table at his boarding-house without some reflection, and studying to take unto himself acceptable words whereby to soften ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is, naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... investigation to a close. Mrs. Lee had been sworn. After a few questions, she was suddenly asked by the counsel for the defence whether she believed in the Christian religion? Her answer was brief and peremptory, without distinction or circumlocution—No. Or, perhaps, not in God? Again she replied, No; and again her answer was prompt and sans phrase. Upon this the judge declared that he could not permit the trial to proceed. The jury had heard what the witness said: she only could give ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the governor, as they met, with a countenance partaking of anger as well as sorrow; and, without much circumlocution, proceeded to state his business, and interceded most warmly in behalf of his men in confinement. But the old Don, before whose mind visions of promotion and honors were floating, was in no humor to grant petitions of ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none; and also providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left without means of uttering itself, except through a ponderous circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the investigation of the laws by which the living principle or excitability is acted on, it will be first necessary to define some terms, which I shall have occasion to use, to avoid circumlocution: and here it may not be improper to observe, that most of our errors in reasoning have arisen from want of strict attention to this circumstance, the accurate definition of those terms which we use in our reasoning. We may use what terms we please, provided ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... seated with their faces from the portiere, behind which Elizabeth waited, wondering what she should do, feeling that she had the right to know, and obedient to the mesmerist's commands. Mr. Amidon began in medias res, too full of grim determination for any circumlocution. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Then Jim, not without circumlocution and many hideous oaths, detailed in his hearer's willing ears the scheme he had in view. He proposed, with Mr. Ryfe's assistance, to accomplish no less flagrant an outrage than the forcible abduction of Lady Bearwarden from her home. He suggested ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... fall in love with a picture." He was dissatisfied with the first attempt at translation into Latin of the Advancement by Dr. Playfer of Cambridge, because he "desired not so much neat and polite, as clear, masculine, and apt expression." Yet, with this hatred of circumlocution and prettiness, of the cloudy amplifications, and pompous flourishings, and "the flowing and watery vein," which the scholars of his time affected, it is strange that he should not have seen that the new ideas and widening ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... gradual emancipation, drawn by Benjamin Franklin, the great leader on this question, approved by the Quakers, and adopted by Pennsylvania in 1780, liberated all the descendants of slaves born after that date within the limits of the State. To avoid circumlocution, I shall call those born before the date of emancipating laws the ante nati, and those born after the date of such ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... kind of circumlocution is employed on several occasions in the old texts to designate royalty. It was contrary to etiquette to mention directly, in common speech, the Pharaoh, or anything belonging to his functions or his family. Cf. pp. 28, 29 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the third person a circumlocution in English is necessary in translation (as "let", "must", "are ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... Pauline's room, where she found her lying on the sofa, a book open in her hand, but evidently lost in a world of dreamy and pleasant revery. With very little circumlocution, for Mrs. Grey was too much excited to choose her words carefully, she repeated to Pauline her conversation with her father; whereupon Pauline rose, and sitting up, her color changing, but her eye ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... a good deal what she would say, how she would accede, and then he perceived that her dignity knew no circumlocution. 'I will send the man for your horse.' She said it with ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... I felt assured; that she would not show me hers unless I forced her to seemed equally certain. Every step I took downward was consequently of moment to me. I wondered how I should come out of this; what she would do; what I myself should say. The bold course commended itself to me. No more circumlocution; no more doubtful playing of the game with this woman. I would take the bull by ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang. It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... thing" by an appropriate circumlocution, and then he thundered back: "How in—nature—is a young writer to forecast the demands of current editors? If an editor is worth his salt—his Attic salt—he does not know himself what he wants, except by the eternal yearning of the editorial ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... (a verb meaning to be above) for the comparative, and apuedi for the diminutive. Ubura, from the verb uburau to be before in time, and adiki, from adikin to be after in time, are also used for the same purpose. The superlative has to be expressed by a circumlocution; as tumaqua aditu ipirrun turreha, what is great beyond all else; bokkia uessa dauria, thou art better than I, where the last word is a compound of dai uwuria of, from, than. The comparative degree of the adjectives corresponds to the intensive and frequentative forms of the verbs; thus ipirrun ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... this old town, as it is remarked by one of the Guide Books, 'want animation'—an amiable circumlocution. Nothing so deserted or lonely can be conceived, and the phenomenon of 'grass literally growing in the streets' is here to be seen in perfection. There appeared to be no vehicles, and the few shops ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... begged pardon for being obliged to adopt a foreign word. And when, in a decree of the senate, the word emblaema (emblem) was read, he proposed to have it changed, and that a Latin word should be substituted in its room; or, if no proper one could be found, to express the thing by circumlocution. A soldier (236) who was examined as a witness upon a trial, in Greek [366], he would not allow to reply, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... however, was not the sort of man to beat about the bush; if he had anything to say he generally said it without any circumlocution, and he did so now. Selecting with care a cigar for himself, lighting it, and pouring out a couple of tumblers of sangaree, he settled himself in his ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... something on your mind, Elizabeth, something surely," he said, "and it is nothing which can give me pleasure, else you would not use so much circumlocution; but ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... catapillered! After all this circumlocution, the man came to the pint, and—sold his eggs in ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... pound he has," replied Ellish, almost instantaneously. "But, Father, you may as well spake out at wanst," she continued, for she was too quick and direct in all her dealings to be annoyed by circumlocution; "you're desairous of a match ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... pilgrimage; but whether of love or of necessity who could tell? And that precisely was what I should have liked to get at. This was not however a question to be asked point-blank, and I could not think of any effective circumlocution. It occurred to me too that she might conceivably know nothing of it herself—I mean by reflection. That young woman had been obviously considering death. She had gone the length of forming some conception of it. But as to its companion fatality—love, she, I ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Under a policy of suppression, manipulated by Metternich with consummate skill in the interest of Austria against Prussia and against German confidence in the sincerity and trustworthiness of the Prussian government, the reaction had by arrests, prosecutions, circumlocution-office delays, banishments, and an elaborate system of espionage, for the most part silenced opposition and saved, not the state, but, at any rate, the status quo. This "success" had incidentally cost Germany the presence and service of some of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... see her at once, or as soon as possible." And at this opportune moment Dora came down the stairs. Theodore advanced to meet her, and feeling almost certain of the character with which he had to deal, came to the point at once without hesitation or circumlocution. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... grammar—the former is preferable. If one's judgment can accept neither, one must relinquish the belief in the possibility of tersely expressing the idea of an offense against grammatical rules. Indeed, it would be difficult to express the idea even by circumlocution. Should some one say, 'This sentence is, according to the rules of grammar, incorrect.' 'What!' the hypercritic may exclaim, 'incorrect! and according to the rules of grammar!' 'This sentence, then,' the corrected person would reply, 'contains an error in grammar.' 'Nonsense!' ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... shabby one-horse-brougham stopped at Mr. Morley's door. She asked to see Mrs. Morley, and through her had an interview with her husband. Without circumlocution, she told him that if he would lay his affairs before her and a certain accountant she named, to use their judgment regarding them in the hope of finding it possible to serve him, they would wait upon him for ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... other party was, I am convinced the Government got the best of the bargain. But long before this occurred, I had fulfilled my promise to Robert; for as soon as my patient recovered strength of memory enough to make his answer trustworthy, I asked, without any circumlocution,— ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... clothed in a garment of pure white calico or fine muslin. Blue, being the colour of mourning, may not be worn in his presence, neither the name of death pronounced in his hearing. This circumstance is usually expressed by some circumlocution, as that such a person has sacrificed himself at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... know," said Lottie, lowering her tone, and giving her chair a little confidential hitch toward the simple-hearted lady with whom formality and circumlocution were impossible, "that I am beginning to think about these ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... somewhat technical; as, in legal phraseology; in military phrase. Diction is general; wording is limited; we speak of the diction of an author or of a work, the wording of a proposition, of a resolution, etc. Verbiage never bears this sense (see CIRCUMLOCUTION.) The language of a writer or speaker may be the national speech he employs; as, the English or French language; or the word may denote his use of that language; as, the author's language is well (or ill) chosen. Style includes diction, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... he was to his master's tricks of circumlocution, the bravo was so far from expecting this question, that at first he stood mute, and only after a few moments' ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in which most of the real things of his life had happened. There his wife, nearly twenty-six years ago, had broken to him, with a blushing circumlocution that would have caused the young women of the new generation to smile, the news that she was to have a child; and there their eldest boy, Dallas, too delicate to be taken to church in midwinter, had been christened by their old ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... them. The Indians all met me in council, as I had desired, and I then told them that the men who had taken part in shooting the woman would have to be delivered up for punishment. They were very stiff with me at the interview, and with all that talent for circumlocution and diplomacy with which the Indian is lifted, endeavored to evade my demands and delay any conclusion. But I was very positive, would hear of no compromise whatever, and demanded that my terms be at once complied with. No one was with me but a sergeant of my company, named ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... promoters, and are in their nature ephemeral. There is, consequently, a widespread and well justified mistrust of novel schemes for the industrial regeneration of Ireland. I confess to having had my ingenuity severely taxed on some occasions to find a sympathetic circumlocution wherewith to show cause for declining to join a new movement, my real reason being an inward conviction that nothing except resolutions would be moved. In the complex problem of building up the economic and social life of a people with such a history as ours, we must resist the temptation to ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... "To save any further circumlocution, sir, and in order that we may fully understand each other, I will say at once, that ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... meal in his usual loquacious manner; and after a great many words and circumlocution, the fact was discovered that he and his friends had spent the last five years in California, not having visited a civilized post ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... security of the fugitives, and felt a strong desire to encourage it. He found evasion difficult, however, and well knew the danger of committing himself. Instead of giving a straightforward answer, therefore, he had recourse to circumlocution and subterfuge. ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... his is an undefined, unclassifiable mixture. Eastern farm-hand and Western ranchman, prospector, who knows what? His real language is in his eye and his rare, pure smile. And just as his countenance expresses his thoughts without circumlocution or attempt at effect, so his body informs his clothing. Wind and rain have moulded his hat to his head, his shoes grip the ground like paws; his buckskins have a surface like a cast after Rodin. They are repousseed by the hard ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... she said with her peculiar exact deliberation and gift of circumlocution, "it is better to go and sew your sampler than to tease ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... encroaching license, began to introduce the Latin idiom: and Browne, though he gave less disturbance to our structures in phraseology, yet poured in a multitude of exotick words; many, indeed, useful and significant, which, if rejected, must be supplied by circumlocution, such as commensality, for the state of many living at the same table; but many superfluous, as a paralogical, for an unreasonable doubt; and some so obscure, that they conceal his meaning rather than explain it, as arthritical analogies, for parts that serve ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... European languages into Active and Passive, seems to be useless in Slavic; for their being active or passive has no influence upon their flexion; and the forms of the Latin Passive and Deponent must in Slavic be expressed by a circumlocution. A division of more importance and springing from the peculiarity of the language itself, is that into verbs Perfect and Imperfect. Neither the Greek, nor the Latin, nor the German, nor any of the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... Everard is committed for trial on the charge of murder. His best witness, Granfer, who had seen and spoken with him in the village at the moment of the alleged murder, greatly discredited his evidence by his circumlocution and stupidity, purposely affected to set the court in a roar. He admitted that Everard gave him money and tobacco. Judkins swore that at three o'clock Lee told him Everard had asked Alma to meet him at dusk that evening in the wood, and that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... rang out. "I should call the place where you wrote the Circumlocution Office. Well, to keep up your way of doing things, that member of the family read ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... a passage of his shortcoming comments on Bacon's "Essays," uses preparedness. Albeit that brevity is a cardinal virtue in writing, a circumlocution would, we think, be better than a gawky word like this, so unsteady on its long legs. In favor of indebtedness over others of like coinage, this is to be said—that it imports that which in one form or other comes home to ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... use of words and phrases is that which is termed circumlocution, a going around the bush when there is no occasion for it,—save to ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... is grotesque and malicious. One day they arrived, attended by a Gypsy jockey whom I had never previously seen. We had scarcely been seated a minute, when this fellow, rising, took me to the window, and without any preamble or circumlocution, said - 'Don Jorge, you shall lend me two barias' (ounces of gold). 'Not to your whole race, my excellent friend,' said I; 'are you frantic? Sit down and be discreet.' He obeyed me literally, sat down, and when ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... visit the Prerogative Registry of the United Kingdom at Somerset House, wherein is filed the original Will of Charles Dickens. The search for this interesting document pursued by a stranger under pressure of time, strongly reminds one of the "Circumlocution Office" so graphically described in Bleak House. But we are enthusiastic, and at length obtain a clue to it in a folio volume (Letter D), containing the names of testators who died in the year 1870, where the Will is briefly ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... clearly, and without circumlocution. I am convinced it is only some gossiping or slander you wish to retail. You come as a salaried family spy who has snapped up some greasy morsels of scandal. Your eyes are glowing with malicious pleasure, as they always do when you are about to ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... from Rosanette. She thanked him for having risked his life on her behalf. Frederick did not at first understand what she meant; finally, after a considerable amount of circumlocution, while appealing to his friendship, relying on his delicacy, as she put it, and going on her knees to him on account of the pressing necessity of the case, as she wanted bread, she asked him for a loan of five hundred francs. He at once made up his mind ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... of course; that goes without saying. Whatever you care to tell me about your son will be mentioned to no one. Pray proceed, without further circumlocution, for ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... what a Parliamentary report ought to be—calm, perspicuous, and decided. There is no circumlocution nor ambiguity of expression here. After a patient investigation into the whole question, and a minute examination of enemies as well as friends, the Lords arrived at the opinion, that the existing banking system of Scotland ought on all points to be maintained, and they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... it with the Circumlocution Office!" exclaimed the President. "I'm surprised at you, Huntingdon! You know what the budget and red tape of Washington does to a temperament like Miss Allen's. On the other hand, here is my friend, who would give her absolutely free rein and ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... false, we adhere to it in the language of every-day life. It is a convenient misrepresentation, and deceives nobody. And such will, in all likelihood, be the usage regarding the external world, after the contradiction is admitted, and rectified by a metaphysical circumlocution. Speculators are still only trying their hand at an unobjectionable circumlocution; but we may almost be sure that nothing will ever supersede, for practical uses, the notion of the distinct worlds of Mind ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Dr. Wycherley: bland and bald with a fine bead, and a face naturally intelligent, but crossed every now and then by gleams of vacancy; a man of large reading, and of tact to make it subserve his interests. A voluminous writer on certain medical subjects, he had so saturated himself with circumlocution, that it distilled from his very tongue: he talked like an Article, a Quarterly one; and so gained two advantages: 1st, he rarely irritated a fellow-creature; for if he began a sentence hot, what with its length, and what with its windiness, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... trustful honesty." Here, on the other hand, thousands of people, by knocking months and years off their real age, have been telling good straightforward lies for their country. At the Front euphemism in describing hardship is mingled with circumlocution in official terminology. Thus one C.O. is reported to refer to the enemy not as Germans but "militant bodies of ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... polite to put into words. The ensuing explanation was somewhat unintelligible to Frobisher, notwithstanding the valiant efforts of his interpreter. But he gathered that the admiral considered Prince Hsi's reasons as quite inadequate, and concluded by informing the Prince, without any circumlocution, that he, as admiral, was quite as capable as her captain of judging whether the ship was fit for sea or not, that as in his opinion she was perfectly ready, to sea she should go, and the rest of the squadron with her, as he had ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... mysterious 'Court of Chance,' where things dragged on for years, a political circumlocution office, hopelessly bound by its own interminable seals, parchments and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... production of one than of the other? Historically it would be interesting to trace the rise of this notion of woman as an enigma. The savage races do not appear to have it. A woman to the North American Indian is a simple affair, dealt with without circumlocution. In the Bible records there is not much mystery about her; there are many tributes to her noble qualities, and some pretty severe and uncomplimentary things are said about her, but there is little affectation of not understanding her. She may be a prophetess, or a consoler, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... That fellow Tannonius wished to indicate the nature of the obscenity, but failed, matchless pleader that he is, owing to his inability to speak. After long hesitation he indicated the name of one of them by means of some clumsy and disgusting circumlocution. The other he found impossible to describe with decency, and evaded the difficulty by turning to my works and quoting a certain passage from them in which I described the attitude ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... my sea manners. I should have used more circumlocution, but they don't put much polish on ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... who never used circumlocution, when direct means were at all available, "this is Corny Littlepage, of whom you have heard me speak so often, and for whom I ask one of your best curtsies ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... at night, November 20th, that Colonel Allen, Captain Baker, and more than a score of their friends, entered the settlement with all the care and circumlocution of Indians. Nuck and Lot Breckenridge had joined the party at supper time in a certain rendezvous of Allen's in the woods, having hidden their canoe and traps on the bank of the Otter several miles away. The ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... de Tracy, strange to say, had a soft side towards this young man, the son of her family solicitor. Mark was invariably sent down by his father when there was any business to be transacted at Stoke Revel. The older man was fond of a good dinner, and hated circumlocution about affairs, and it was only when a death in the family, or some other crucial event, made his presence absolutely necessary that he came down himself. Mark was sacrificed instead, and many a wearisome hour had ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... happy medium, for there is such a thing as being too systematic. There are men and women, for instance, who put away things so carefully that they can never find them again. It is too much like the "red tape" formality at Washington, and Mr. Dickens' "Circumlocution Office,"—all theory ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... Bishop Berkeley, were once clothed with a "brief authority;" but Berkeley ended his metaphysical theory with a treatise on the healing properties of tar-water, and Hegel was an inveterate snuff-taker. The circumlocution and cold categories of Kant fail to improve the conditions of mortals, morally, spiritually, or physically. Such miscalled metaphysical systems are reeds shaken by the wind. Compared with the inspired wisdom and infinite meaning ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... dat am consider'ble ob a story, Massa Jack, de circumlocution ob which would take a heap ob time tellin'," he began soberly. "But it happened 'bout dis away. When de Yankees come snoopin' long de East Sho'—I reck'n maybe it des a yeah after dat time when we done buried de ol' Co'nel—dey burned Missus Caton's house clah to ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... with less circumlocution than the worthy Corporal; and nothing further occurred to disturb either the harmony of the company, or the equanimity of Mr. Tickels, until Mr. Goldworthy, with a countenance full of astonishment and alarm, announced ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... is some law which makes an indirect speech more easy than a direct one, is greatly borne out by the cross-correspondences, where circumlocution continually takes the place of assertion. Thus, in the St. Paul correspondence, which is treated in the July pamphlet of the S.P.R., the idea of St. Paul was to be conveyed from one automatic writer to ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as possible. I will not deny that I fear you have made a mistake and honoured my poor house by inadvertence; for, to speak openly, I cannot at all remember your appearance. Let me put the question without unnecessary circumlocution - between gentlemen of honour a word will suffice - Under whose roof do ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great leader on this question, approved by the Quakers, and adopted by Pennsylvania in 1780, liberated all the descendants of slaves born after that date within the limits of the State. To avoid circumlocution, I shall call those born before the date of emancipating laws the ante nati, and those born after the date of such laws, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... beauty was not disappointed. The milliner sent the costume ordered, but wrote to inform Miss Graham, with all due circumlocution and politeness, that, unless her long-standing account were quickly settled, legal proceedings must be taken. Lydia threw the letter aside with a frown, and proceeded to inspect her dress, which was perfect ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 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 this kind that do not admit of exceptions, and I am too apprehensive that the ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is "to tip him a kiss;" "pingue ingenium" is a circumlocution for "a blockhead;" "anilia instrumenta" are "his old woman's accoutrements;" and "repetito munere Bacchi" is conveyed to the sense of the reader as, "they return again to their bottle, and take the other glass." These are but a specimen of the blemishes which disfigure the most literal ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... illiterate though it was, the letter had a certain noble simplicity. "Tres gentil," I remarked as I returned it to Jeanne, and thought the matter at an end. But Jeanne had not done, and, with much circumlocution and many hesitations, she at last preferred a simple request. I was going to visit the battlefield of the Marne—yes? I assented. Well, perhaps, perhaps Monsieur would visit Paul's grave, and perhaps if he ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... swaddling clothes about an infant when it should run about stark naked. May the great devil give them a clyster with his red-hot three-pronged fork. I am going on with my story now without further circumlocution. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he is not going to sing: but according to ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... healthy amusement and strengthening mirth. It was his mission to make people happy. Words of good cheer were native to his lips, and he was always doing what he could to lighten the lot of all who came into his beautiful presence. His talk was simple, natural, and direct, never dropping into circumlocution nor elocution. Now that he is gone, whoever has known him intimately for any considerable period of time will linger over his tender regard for, and his engaging manner with, children; his cheery "Good Day" to poor people he happened ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Mars the use of compliment and circumlocution; and until I concluded, their looks of mild perplexity showed that neither Zulve nor her husband caught my purpose. I fancied—for, not daring to look them in the face, I had turned my downcast glance on Eveena—that she had perhaps somewhat sooner divined ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... the admiral, who was himself a man of much older family than her father. He attacked the general the next morning. He hated circumlocution and went directly to the point. "You object to your daughter marrying Sir Pearce Ripley because his father was a boatswain. I tell you I was for many years of inferior rank to a boatswain. I entered the navy as captain's servant. What do you say to that? It does not signify what a man has ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the flower of the family taking an early breakfast at 11 A. M., in his cosey apartments on Thirty-fourth Street. With the least possible circumlocution she confronted him with what rumor had reported of his pursuits, and was pleased, but not too much pleased, when he gave her an exact account of his relations with Mademoiselle Zabriski, neither concealing nor qualifying anything. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... But their protestations of sympathy with Vitellius really voiced their personal vexation.[98] None of the speeches contained any criticism of the Flavian generals. They threw the blame on the misguided and impolitic action of the armies, and with cautious circumlocution avoided all direct mention of Vespasian. Caecina's consulship[99] had still one day to run, and Rosius Regulus actually made humble petition for this one day's office, Vitellius' offer and his acceptance exciting ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... but he is blemished with the weakness of his predecessor. Rhyme (for I will deal clearly) has somewhat of the usurper in him; but he is brave and generous, and his dominion pleasing."[52] To the objection that the difficulties of rhyme will lead to circumlocution, he answers in substance, that a good poet will ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... happiness at Cambridge. The hint had been somewhat superfluous; but the question remained, what was necessary? With a view of getting some light on this delicate subject we paid a visit the next evening to our former friends and schoolmates, whose advice was conveyed with a masterly circumlocution that impressed us both. There are some things that may not be discussed directly, and the conduct of life at a modern university—which is a reflection of life in the greater world—is one of these. Perry Blackwood and Ham did most of the talking, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... aware of two things in our family history," I continued, therefore, without circumlocution: "one that my sister would have been mistress of a small fortune, had she reached the term of twenty-one years, and the other ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... entertain very different notions to others as to what is an insult," said the officer, with a sneer, intended to excite Morton's anger. "My friend Maguire is exceedingly sensitive as to his honour. Not to lose time, sir, by any circumlocution in my remarks, you are, sir, I am led to understand, Lieutenant Morton, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... regret than usual that Rosamond, who was just come in and met her in walking-dress, was almost as expensively equipped. Mrs. Bulstrode was a feminine smaller edition of her brother, and had none of her husband's low-toned pallor. She had a good honest glance and used no circumlocution. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ill news to her. When Mademoiselle de Chausseraye arrived at Madame l'Argenton's house, Madame d'Argenton was out she had gone to supper with the Princesse de Rohan. Mademoiselle de Chausseraye waited until she returned, and then broke the matter to her gently, and after much preamble and circumlocution, as though she were about to announce the death ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... scandalmongers, gathering matter as they flew. He knocked at Diana's door, where he was informed that the mistress of the house was absent. More than official gravity accompanied the announcement. Her address was unknown. Sir Lukin thought it now time to tell his wife. He began with a hesitating circumlocution, in order to prepare her mind for bad news. She divined immediately that it concerned Diana, and forcing him to speak to the point, she had the story jerked out to her in a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... insistence on affording every facility for merit to rise from the ranks, embodied in measures against promotion by Purchase; his advocacy of State-aided Emigration, of administrative and civil service Reform,—the abolition of "the circumlocution office" in Downing Street,—of the institution of a Minister of Education; his dwelling on the duties as well as the rights of landowners,—the theme of so many Land Acts; his enlarging on the superintendence of labour,—made practical in Factory and Limited Hours Bills—on care of the really ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... "Without so much circumlocution, either," said Jones. "We like your room better than your company just now, Louis ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... often stayed with him (not as a patient), and a very comfortable and pretty place it was. Now and then he would call on me in London; and, with a face full of theatrical woe, tell me, with elaborate circumlocution, how the Earl of This, or the Marquis of That, had implored him to take charge of young Lord So-and-So, his son; who, as all the world knew, had - well, had 'no guts in his brains.' Was there ever such a chance? Just consider what it must lead to! Everybody knew - no, nobody knew ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... stories with imperturbable sang froid, in a dry manner, and with perfect naturalness and simplicity. He spoke as a man of the world, without circumlocution; his adventures were numerous and perhaps singular, but only such as might have been expected to happen to a man of so much experience. A smile never traversed his face as he related the least credible of his tales, which the less intimate of his acquaintance began in time to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the 'agitation and attention' which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying 'some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to the distant West': a work on Professor Teufelsdroeckh 'were undoubtedly welcome to the Family, the National, or any other of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... still have an ever present consciousness of a guilty intrigue. Yet there it was. Until he had seen her and spoken to her, it was his day's important problem to devise some way to bring about the meeting. So with devilish caution and ponderous circumlocution and craft he went about his daily work, serene in the satisfaction that he was being successful in his elaborate deceit; rather gloating at times in the iniquity of one in his position being in so low a business. He wondered what the people would say if they really ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... make this plain without further circumlocution, we may as well inform the reader at once that the Wild Man of the West (perhaps we should call him Dick, in deference to March Marston's ignorance of his real character at this time) was not only a subject of terror to the Indians inhabiting this region of the ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is, naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, so very bumpy in the head, that patriarch was the word for him." Painters implored him to be a model for some patriarch they designed to paint. Philanthropists looked on him as famous capital for a platform. He had once been town agent in the Circumlocution Office, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in such cases—the right of the Union, and fidelity to it. This rebuff is generally spoken of by the press as 'the Nashville Snag.' There be such things as snag-extractors, and we trust that our Government is free enough from red-tape do-nothingism and circumlocution, to make short work of these insolent rebels, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cleared and cheroots produced, without any circumlocution or preface, Shafto plunged into his subject and laid his information and suspicions before his friend who, to his ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... tempter, I have been led to question very much the policy, not to say the lawfulness, of excluding that terrible foe as we do from our general discourse. It seems to be regarded a manifest impropriety to name him, except with the most studied circumlocution, as though we were afraid of treating him irreverently; and he who is seldom named will not often be thought of. Assuredly it is a great help to him in his countless devices to be so kept out of sight. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... suppose," he turned to the others, "and as they're both dead it's no contravention of the club etiquette against talking of women, to speak of her. I can't very well give the instance—the sign—that Rulledge is seeking without speaking of her, unless I use a great deal of circumlocution." We all urged him to go on, and he went on. "I had the facts I'm going to give, from Mrs. Ormond. You know that the Ormonds left New York a couple ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... that her name was Mrs. Russell; that she had been captured, along with her daughter, by the Carlists; that she had escaped, hoping to get help to rescue her daughter. All this Russell stated, not without much circumlocution ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... "Rule, Britannia," Thomson wrote two poems respectively in the Spenserian and the Miltonic manner, the former The Castle of Indolence, the latter The Seasons. The Spenserian manner is caught very effectively, but the adoption of the style of Paradise Lost, with its allusiveness, circumlocution and weight, removes any freshness the Seasons might have had, had the circumstances in them been put down as they were observed. As it is, hardly anything is directly named; birds are always the "feathered tribe" and everything else has a similar ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Benga, the Bakele, and the Mpongwe dialects is as follows: "The Mpongwes have a great partiality for the use of the passive voice, and avoid the active when the passive can be used. The Bakele verb delights in the active voice, and will avoid the passive even by a considerable circumlocution. The Benga takes an intermediate position in this respect, and uses the active and passive very much as ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Language, like number, is intermediate between the two, partaking of the definiteness of the outer and of the universality of the inner world. For logic teaches us that every word is really a universal, and only condescends by the help of position or circumlocution to become the expression of individuals or particulars. And sometimes by using words as symbols we are able to give a 'local habitation and a name' to ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... the revolution pervaded every line, every word. The writers did not dare to propose plainly the revocation of the Charter, and the abolition of the new institutions; but they declared without any circumlocution, that the dynasty of the Bourbons would never be secure with the existing laws; and that it was necessary, to distrust and get rid of the men of the revolution. More effectually to know and persecute these, M. de Blacas had caused to be disinterred from the archives of the cabinet, and of the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... horse, if he does not conquer you in front, his kick from behind is sure to be fatal."' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 167. 'In arguing,' wrote Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Johnson did not trouble himself with much circumlocution, but opposed directly and abruptly his antagonist. He fought with all sorts of weapons—ludicrous comparisons and similies; if all failed, with rudeness and overbearing. He thought it necessary never to be worsted in argument. He had one virtue which I hold one of the most difficult ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... also to send a few lines to Kurnberger to tell him that I have given you his manuscript? It would be discourteous if I were to leave him without any answer, and, as I cannot say anything further to him, we should save useless circumlocution if you would be so good as to correspond ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... "We must strike them! We must never let them pass us again!" On the thirtieth he was horrified at getting from Beauregard (who was then between Richmond and Petersburg) a telegram which showed that the Confederate Government was busy with the circumlocution office in Richmond while the enemy was thundering at the gate. "War Department must determine when and what troops to order from here." Lee immediately answered: "If you cannot determine what troops you can spare, the Department cannot. The result of your delay will ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... live ones; and when one grows hot and alive within us, everything has to re-crystallize about it. We may say that the heat and liveliness mean only the "motor efficacy," long deferred but now operative, of the idea; but such talk itself is only circumlocution, for whence the sudden motor efficacy? And our explanations then get so vague and general that one realizes all the more the intense individuality ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... complexion. Skate vigorously; then your heart will beat true, your cheeks will bloom, your appointed lover will see your beautiful soul shining through your beautiful face, he will tell you so, and after sufficient circumlocution he will Pop, you will accept, and your lives will glide sweetly as skating on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... merely to discover whether we had any goods remaining or not. I told him that we had nothing at present to give for meat, however much we stood in need of it, but that we would pay for it by notes on the North-West Company in any kind of goods they pleased. After much artful circumlocution and repeated assurances of the necessities of the men who owned the meat he introduced them and they readily agreed to give us the provision on ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... she closed the door upon herself and the tray when Sir Francis Levison appeared, equipped for traveling. "Good-bye, Isabel," said he, without further circumlocution or ceremony. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... ben or ken or adin (a verb meaning to be above) for the comparative, and apuedi for the diminutive. Ubura, from the verb uburau to be before in time, and adiki, from adikin to be after in time, are also used for the same purpose. The superlative has to be expressed by a circumlocution; as tumaqua aditu ipirrun turreha, what is great beyond all else; bokkia uessa dauria, thou art better than I, where the last word is a compound of dai uwuria of, from, than. The comparative degree of the adjectives corresponds ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... Indians were not in this respect far behind them. It is true that the drinking of wine is forbidden by the tenets of their religion; but in respect of champagne, they understand how to evade this commandment by christening it by the harmless name of "sparkling lemonade," a circumlocution which of course did not in the slightest counteract its exhilarating effects. The Indians who were less proof against the effects of alcohol were much more quickly intoxicated than their new European friends; and under the influence of the potent ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... of interference is very common where the husband is a man of broad humor—one who calls a spade a spade, with no circumlocution about an agricultural implement. The wife of such a man is generally one of the ultra-refined kind, according to the odd law of compensation which regulates so much of human action, and thinks herself obliged to stand as the enduring censor of her husband's speech. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... livelihood, as I could not think of burdening Thomas and Martha any longer, loath as they were for me to leave them. Some pleasant weeks, I say, had thus glided away, when Mr Budge, with much ceremony and circumlocution, as if he had deeply pondered the matter, and considered it very weighty and important, made a communication which materially changed and brightened my prospects. It was to the effect, that an intimate friend of his, whom he had known, he said, all his life, required the immediate services of a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... rid of more cargo. Come, good woman," turning to Biddy, with whom he did not think it worth his while to use much circumlocution, "your turn is next. It's the maid's duty to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the response "Sure thing" by an appropriate circumlocution, and then he thundered back: "How in—nature—is a young writer to forecast the demands of current editors? If an editor is worth his salt—his Attic salt—he does not know himself what he wants, except by the eternal yearning of the editorial soul for something new ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... documents; dissertations stood in place of action; a million of reports were written every year; bureaucracy was enthroned! Records, statistics, documents, failing which France would have been ruined, circumlocution, without which there could be no advance, increased, multiplied, and grew majestic. From that day forth bureaucracy used to its own profit the mistrust that stands between receipts and expenditures; it degraded the administration for the benefit of the administrators; in short, it spun ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... a fortune of forty, perhaps sixty, thousand francs a year from the claws of that slut; but you either do not answer me, or you seem never to understand my meaning. So to-day I am obliged to write without epistolary circumlocution. I feel for the misfortune which has overtaken you, but, my dearest, I can do no more than pity you. And this is why: Hochon, at eighty-five years of age, takes four meals a day, eats a salad with hard-boiled eggs every night, and frisks about like a rabbit. I shall have ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... indifferently, according as either of them is better calculated to sharpen the wits of the auditors. Reason would also say to him who censures the length of discourses on such occasions and cannot away with their circumlocution, that he should not be in such a hurry to have done with them, when he can only complain that they are tedious, but he should prove that if they had been shorter they would have made those who took part in them better ...
— Statesman • Plato
... detail and much cumbersome legal circumlocution, it was to the following effect:—That about three months ago Mr. Burnett had come up from his place in Sussex, and at the offices of Messrs. Grandly & Co. had made a will, in which he had disinherited his adopted daughter, Miss Emily Watson, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... them; indeed, it is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling about his person: he had half a million of eager testimonies to this idea. Who was to tell him the truth?—Only in the last years of his life did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution, that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... profound convictions on the one hand and his official duties on the other, and that, in order to maintain his position, he had to assume a certain slant. Then I experienced great pain at seeing the reserve, the circumlocution, the figures, and the irony to which a professor of legislation, whose duty it is to teach dogmas with clearness and precision, was forced to resort; and I fell to cursing the society in which an honest man is not allowed to say frankly what he thinks. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... HIS sympathy had nothing in common with the captain's, since he dealt, not in empty words alone, but in actual deeds; in proof of which he was ready then and there (for the purpose of cutting the matter short, and of dispensing with circumlocution) to transfer to himself the obligation of paying the taxes due upon such serfs as Plushkin's as had, in the unfortunate manner just described, departed this world. The proposal seemed to astonish Plushkin, for he sat staring open-eyed. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... telling them also who was the murderer, and I could not see how that murderer could be punished without ruin to my unfortunate James. You asked for frankness, Mr. Holmes, and I have taken you at your word, for I have now told you everything without an attempt at circumlocution or concealment. Do you in turn be as frank ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... — N. phrase, expression, set phrase; sentence, paragraph; figure of speech &c. 521; idiom, idiotism[obs3]; turn of expression; style. paraphrase &c. (synonym) 522; periphrase &c. (circumlocution) 573 motto &c. (proverb) 496[obs3]. phraseology &c. 569. V. express, phrase; word, word it; give words to, give expression to; voice; arrange in words, clothe in words, put into words, express by words; couch in terms; find words to express; speak by the card; call, denominate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reader must put away his notions of refinement and delicacy. He must be prepared to be entertained by blows, licentious assaults, a tub of hog's blood thrown by a clergyman, coarse practical jokes, foul talk, all put before him without disguise or circumlocution. As he follows Parson Adams, Joseph, and Fanny in their journey, he must always be ready for a fight. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Still the same cold, ominous faces, veritable faces of judges with the terrible word of human destiny on their lips, the Final word, which the courts pronounce without emotion, but which the doctors, all of whose skill and learning it baffles, evade and seek to convey by circumlocution. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... thank you, Mr. Woodward, to state what you have to say with as little circumlocution and ambiguity as possible. Take me out of suspense, and let me know the worst. Do not, I entreat you, keep me in a state of uncertainty. Although I have acknowledged my love for your brother, in order ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... North and South—and the Clarion had warned the "inert and muddling Government" of the colony "that unless the just and courteous request of the telegraphic staff of the Bowen Repeating Office for a punkah is acceded to without further circumlocution, the growing movement in favour of Separation will be openly advocated by this journal. Already (of this we have private knowledge) has Lord Kimberley expressed himself astonished at the heartless refusal ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... feel no other love than that which he cherishes for his own worthy person, and the purses of all others. Let him explain now, quickly and without circumlocution, if he really wishes my pardon, why, after going to Nurnberg to marry a bag of gold, containing a few millions, he ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... am a person of few words, and will therefore state without circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent. I speak Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I might easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of which town are Chinamen. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... smallest circumlocution. His voice was low, in keeping with the scene, but the words dropped with a sharp distinctness into the other's heart like grains of sand that pricked the skin before they smothered him. Caution they ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... Dick told Annie that he loved her. He spoke without any circumlocution, merely taking her hand one evening, when they happened to be alone together, and telling her so in ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... not,' replied he; 'I wish to be fair. I cannot express my idea of the meaning of transcendentalism without tedious circumlocution, and I begin to despair of proving my position by quotations. It is not on any particular passage that I rest my case. You have read this work, and will understand me when I say that it is to its general intent and spirit that I object, and not ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... to reply to this, and the proceedings went on in due form. Without being sworn, the plaintiff was called upon to state his case, which he did with an elaborate circumlocution altogether without a parallel in my experience. He detailed the whole history of his life—from his birth, in Wolfenbuettel, up to his seven years' service in the army; then followed his whole military career; and after that, his service under the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... made his character a marked and singular one—proud, jealous, and sensitive, to an extreme which was painful not merely to himself, but at times to others. But he was noble, lofty, sincere, without a touch of meanness in his composition, above circumlocution, with a simplicity of character strikingly great, but without anything ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the evening before, with an old aunt, to remain for the whole spring! Monsieur de Langevy, who was not addicted to circumlocution in his mode of talk, told his son point-blank, that his cousin was a pretty girl, and what was more, a considerable heiress—so that it was his duty—his, Hector de Langevy—the owner of a great name ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... was comfortably despatched did Mr. Gammon give a sign that it might now be well to inform Mrs. Clover of what had happened. He nodded gravely to Mrs. Bubb, who with unaffected nervousness, causing her to ramble and stumble for many minutes in mazes of circumlocution, at length conveyed the fact to her anxious listener that Polly Sparkes had said something or other which implied a knowledge of Mr. Clover's whereabouts. Committed to this central fact, and urged by Mrs. Clover's growing impatience, ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... other South American languages are almost equally destitute of numeral words. But even here, rudimentary as the number sense undoubtedly is, it is not wholly lacking; and some indirect expression, or some form of circumlocution, shows a conception of the difference between one and two, or at ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... are aware that I possess authority to compel you to speak; therefore, answer me without excuse or circumlocution; it will save trouble." ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... my face I felt assured; that she would not show me hers unless I forced her to seemed equally certain. Every step I took downward was consequently of moment to me. I wondered how I should come out of this; what she would do; what I myself should say. The bold course commended itself to me. No more circumlocution; no more doubtful playing of the game with this woman. I would take the ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... have been a curious study for such men as love to gaze upon the dark and wily features of human character, to have watched the contrast between the reciter and the listener, as Beaufort, with much circumlocution, much affected disdain and real anxiety, narrated the singular and ominous conversation between ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The world has come to run so much by rote and gravitation that you can enter upon hardly any footpath of chance in which you do not find signboards informing you of what you may expect at its end. I am like the clerk in the Circumlocution Office who always complained bitterly when any one came in to ask information. 'He wanted to know, you know!' was the kick he made to his fellow-clerks. Well, I don't want to know, I don't want to reason, I don't want to guess—I want to bet ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... I understand "his qui sunt undique." See Wordsworth's "Hippolytus," p. 200. We have thus a remarkable proof that the word catholic was not in use when Irenaeus wrote, for he here expresses the idea by a circumlocution. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... says afterwards—her strong expressions, which are calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves—the reflections she interposes—her delays and circumlocution to give time for any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself—all, all are premeditated and tend in the same manner to the object she has in ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of the master of the house, of his sins of omission and commission alike, were permissible in the Chapel-Room and in the presence of her late companions. The subject, unhappily, had called for too frequent mention, by now, for any circumlocution to be incumbent in the discussion of it. But here, in the brooding quiet of this bedchamber, and in Lady Calmady's presence, all that was changed. Trenchant statements of opinion, words of blame, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... it is very possible, that a child might, on the contrary, learn all the properties, and the various uses of gold, without having learned its name; his ideas of this metal would be perfectly distinct; but whenever he wished to speak of gold, he would be obliged to use a vast deal of circumlocution to make himself understood; and if he were to enumerate all the properties of the metal every time he wanted to recal the general idea, his conversation would be intolerably tedious to others, and to himself this useless repetition must be extremely laborious. He would ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... as I walked up the hill, on which I accidentally encountered my official friend—under these circumstances of the men having successfully opposed themselves to the Pagoda Department of that great Circumlocution Office on which the sun never sets and the light of reason never rises, the Pagoda Department will have been particularly careful of the national honour. It will have shown these men, in the scrupulous good faith, not to say the generosity, of its dealing with ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... she stole across the kitchen floor, toeing in like an Indian tracking an enemy through the forest. The small window at the back of the kitchen commanded a view of the road in all its sprawling circumlocution. Seen from this prospect, it had no more design than the idle scrawlings of a child on a bit of paper; but the choice of roads to Good and Evil was not fraught with more momentous consequences than was each prong of that fork towards ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... correctly, and his wife went the next day to Andrew's, as usual; and, seating herself by his bedside, said, without circumlocution, "I have something to say to you, Andrew. Are you ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... impossible to extract from Mr. Bishopriggs any clearer description of the man who had been with Anne at the inn than this, Blanche approached the main object of the interview. Too anxious to waste time in circumlocution, she turned the conversation at once to the delicate and doubtful ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... had been more evident than before, or that they had gradually obtruded themselves into the slow mind of his good German host; but, whatever the cause, the boarding-house keeper beckoned the young man into his private room and started on the subject without any circumlocution. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and seated with their faces from the portiere, behind which Elizabeth waited, wondering what she should do, feeling that she had the right to know, and obedient to the mesmerist's commands. Mr. Amidon began in medias res, too full of grim determination for any circumlocution. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in the person of Madame Merle; but Madame Merle's relations with Mrs. Touchett had undergone a perceptible change. Isabel's aunt had told her, without circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and Madame Merle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no one worth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less, for several years with Mrs. Touchett and showing no symptom of irritation—Madame ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... weight of it any longer. I can't give you all the details, but you may rely on what I say being correct." He looked away from Larry out of the window. The car was running swiftly up the smooth levels of the long avenue; he knew he had no time for circumlocution. "My father told me," he began, "that in some way, between himself and the Major a lot of money had passed. The Major was greatly pressed for money—he wasn't getting his rents, and there were many liabilities—my father got hold of them all. I think he lent him a lot of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... professor's chair. He made use of poetry as a means to accomplish ends foreign and extrinsecal to it; and this has often polluted the artistic purity of his compositions. Thus, the end of his Mahomet was to portray the dangers of fanaticism, or rather, laying aside all circumlocution, of a belief in revelation. For this purpose, he has most unjustifiably disfigured a great historical character, revoltingly loaded him with the most crying enormities, with which he racks and tortures our feelings. Universally known, as he was, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Napoleon, the security which thence resulted to the peace of Europe, and the name of Napoleon II. as a possible and perhaps the best solution of the problems involved in our future. All this was expressed in guarded but sufficiently definite terms, equally without passion or circumlocution, and with a marked intention of ascertaining to what extent I should admit or reject the prospects on which he enlarged. I was unprepared, both for the visit and the conversation; but I stood on no reserve, not expecting to convert M. Manuel to my own views, and with no desire to ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was meant for Miss Bentley, though it was spoken to herself; and Miss Bentley seemed to take the same view of the fact. She said: "We needn't use any circumlocution with Mrs. March, mother. She knows just how the affair stands. You can say whatever you wish, though I don't know why you should wish to say anything. You have made your own terms with us, and we are keeping them to the letter. What more can you ask? Do you want me to break with ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... the supernatural world are communicated to Manbodom. These ceremonial chants are performed not only during religious celebrations but more commonly at night. The greater part of the night is often worn away with a protracted diffuse narration in which is described, with grandiloquent circumlocution and copious imagery, the doings of the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... been acquainted, and which may have had nothing to recommend it to those who so readily adopted it, save novelty and the recognized need of some more convenient name than "Lutherans," "Christaudins," or the awkward circumlocution, "those of the religion." Be this as it may, not a week had passed after the conspiracy of Amboise before the word was in everybody's mouth. Few knew or cared ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
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