circumlocution
C2CEFR level
80/100Rarity: very rare
FormalRegister
General noun
The use of many words where fewer would do, especially to be evasive.
After a paragraph of circumlocution, he finally admitted he had lost the money.
Medicine noun
The use of a roundabout description to convey a word that cannot be retrieved.
She relied on circumlocution, calling a watch 'the thing you tell the time with'.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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