1
as in ambiguity
deliberate evasion in speech
rather than answering the question directly, he resorted to circumlocution, which made her suspect that he was hiding something
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in repetition
the use of too many words to express an idea
your papers have to be five pages long, but that's five pages of substance, not circumlocution
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of circumlocution
But in terms of its actual content, the statement was pretty thin gruel, bristling with public relations-style circumlocution and vagueness.
—
Business Columnist,
Los Angeles Times,
27 Jan. 2026
Here, instead, she’s swayed by a dead Diana softly squeezing her hand and kindly hinting — the dead Diana is an ace at tactful circumlocution — that now is the time to show a mourning nation some emotion.
—
Tom Gliatto,
Peoplemag,
16 Nov. 2023
This year, House Republicans unveiled a new Conservative Climate Caucus that, in a fascinating circumlocution, sort of recognizes that fossil fuels are causing the planet to warm.
—
Robinson Meyer,
The Atlantic,
2 Nov. 2022
Powell’s statement yesterday (September 22) is the masterpiece of its type, building upon fifteen months of this playful circumlocution, downshifting into bureaucratic blandness.
—
George Calhoun,
Forbes,
23 Sep. 2021
But the national crisis in policing and the response to it isn’t a matter of arid elite debate or familiar political circumlocution and compromise anymore.
—
David Roth,
The New Republic,
11 June 2020
By condensing Balzac’s opus to a few paragraphs, Barthelme was having a laugh not just at his predecessor’s genteel circumlocution—his tendency to describe buildings and manufacturing procedures and family trees in lavish detail—but also at the conventions of novelistic mimesis itself.
—
Giles Harvey,
The New York Review of Books,
23 Apr. 2020
These circumlocutions are meant to emphasize the fact that Africans traded like chattel were not, in their essence, slaves but human beings.
—
Lionel Shriver,
Harper's magazine,
25 Nov. 2019
Business Columnist,
Los Angeles Times,
27 Jan. 2026
Here, instead, she’s swayed by a dead Diana softly squeezing her hand and kindly hinting — the dead Diana is an ace at tactful circumlocution — that now is the time to show a mourning nation some emotion.
—
Tom Gliatto,
Peoplemag,
16 Nov. 2023
This year, House Republicans unveiled a new Conservative Climate Caucus that, in a fascinating circumlocution, sort of recognizes that fossil fuels are causing the planet to warm.
—
Robinson Meyer,
The Atlantic,
2 Nov. 2022
Powell’s statement yesterday (September 22) is the masterpiece of its type, building upon fifteen months of this playful circumlocution, downshifting into bureaucratic blandness.
—
George Calhoun,
Forbes,
23 Sep. 2021
But the national crisis in policing and the response to it isn’t a matter of arid elite debate or familiar political circumlocution and compromise anymore.
—
David Roth,
The New Republic,
11 June 2020
By condensing Balzac’s opus to a few paragraphs, Barthelme was having a laugh not just at his predecessor’s genteel circumlocution—his tendency to describe buildings and manufacturing procedures and family trees in lavish detail—but also at the conventions of novelistic mimesis itself.
—
Giles Harvey,
The New York Review of Books,
23 Apr. 2020
These circumlocutions are meant to emphasize the fact that Africans traded like chattel were not, in their essence, slaves but human beings.
—
Lionel Shriver,
Harper's magazine,
25 Nov. 2019
Recent Examples of Synonyms for circumlocution
Noun
-
Leadership teams that are ready for change treat ambiguity as part of the job.
-
The report released last year from the Office of Performance Evaluations found the money’s use wasn’t addressed in state law, which led to inconsistencies and ambiguity on what it can be used for.
Noun
-
Complete 10–15 repetitions per leg.
-
Despite decades of repetition, eating more carrots will not give you night vision.
Noun
-
Guests will hear the shuffle of San Francisco outside the windows, phones ringing, and the lingering voices of apprentices or other clients.
-
Wolfe Research is out with a big shuffle of its retail ratings.
Noun
-
Flatulent describes inflated, pretentious writing; garrulity describes excessive talkativeness.
Noun
-
The people around Trump support these equivocations because anyone who opposes Trump’s ideas in the White House will be shown the door; any Republican who speaks up in Congress will be primaried out of their seat.
-
First, Congress tasked the Fed with the mission to ensure price stability, without excuse or equivocation, argument or anguish.
Noun
-
Clarity In the AI era, verbosity is free and clarity is expensive.
-
Director Scott Ellis understands all this, and thus the admirably specific physical business and slurred verbosity in his gently outré revival really makes for quite the amusing diversion.
Noun
-
The second is diffusion, where AI moves beyond the companies building it and spreads across every sector of the economy.
-
To accelerate this diffusion, collaboration between government, business, civil society, and academia will be vital to share risks, smooth the path to market, and ensure that technological breakthroughs have a positive impact on societies.
Noun
-
Just as the limitless space of web text tempts writers to indulge their logorrhea, the blinking, ever-transmuting, cartoonish interface of web browsers prevents would-be readers from paying attention to anything for longer than about 7 seconds.
-
Nor has Musk kept his Twitter logorrhea in check in other respects.
Cite this Entry
“Circumlocution.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/circumlocution. Accessed 2 Jul. 2026.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
