periphrasis

In linguistics and literature, periphrasis () is the use of a larger number of words, with an implicit comparison to the possibility of using fewer. The comparison may be within a language or between languages. For example, "more happy" is periphrastic in comparison to "happier", and English "I will eat" is periphrastic in comparison to Spanish .

The term originates from the Greek word περιφράζομαι 'talking around', and was originally used for examples that came up in ancient Greek. In epic poetry, it was common to use periphrasis in examples such as "the sons of the Achaeans" (meaning the Achaeans), or "How did such words escape the fence of your teeth?" (adding a layer of poetic imagery to "your teeth"). Sometimes periphrastic forms were used for verbs that would otherwise be unpronounceable. For example, the verb δείκνυμι 'to show', has a hypothetical form * , which has the disallowed consonant cluster , so one would instead say , using a periphrasis with a participle.