circumlocution
noun
Did you know?
In The King’s English (1906), lexicographers H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler advised, “Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.” It’s good advice: using more words than necessary to convey a point can confuse and annoy one’s audience. Circumlocution itself combines two Latin elements: the prefix circum-, meaning “around,” and locutio, meaning “speech.” In essence, circumlocution may be thought of as “roundabout speech.” Since at least the early 16th century, English writers have used circumlocution with disdain, naming a thing to stop, or better yet, to avoid altogether. Charles Dickens used the word to satirize political runarounds in the 1857 novel Little Dorrit with the creation of the fictional Circumlocution Office, a government department that delayed the dissemination of information and just about everything else.
Examples of circumlocution in a Sentence
Los Angeles Times, 8 July 2025
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
Although incredibly popular, with 60% approval ratings, Ahok was considered by many to be a divisive figure, by virtue both of his minority status and of his bluntness, which ran counter to Javanese traditions of deference and circumlocution.
—The Economist, 12 Apr. 2018
Cite this Entry
“Circumlocution.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/circumlocution. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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circumlocution
noun
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