Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“You know,” I thought to myself during one of the many circumlocutory and not-particularly-funny sequences in Life After Beth, “this is probably some sort of metaphor about the universal desire to retain one’s youth.”

From The Guardian • Aug. 14, 2014

Isn't it astonishing, for example, how, once elected, MPs continue the daft traditions of jeering, guffawing and addressing their colleagues by ridiculous circumlocutory terms such as "the right honourable member"?

From The Guardian • Jul. 10, 2013

The German language, famed for its sprawling compound nouns, has lost its most circumlocutory term.

From BBC • Jun. 4, 2013

Fulbright pressed Taylor particularly hard, cutting him off and boring in with questions whose circumlocutory sentences and strangled syntax scarcely sounded worthy of a onetime Rhodes scholar.

From Time Magazine Archive

But, it should be added, that such anecdotes are not told in the circumlocutory style of gossip, nor nipt in the bud by undeveloped brevity.

From The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 535, February 25, 1832 by Various