PERIPHRASIS

Periphrasis

In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which grammatical meaning is expressed by one or more free morphemes, instead of by inflectional affixes or derivation. Periphrastic forms are analytic, whereas the absence of periphrasis is a characteristic of synthesis. While periphrasis concerns all categories of syntax, it is most visible with verb catenae. The verb catenae of English are highly periphrastic.

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periphrasis

Noun

  1. The use of a longer expression instead of a shorter one with a similar meaning, for example "I am going to" instead of "I will".
  2. Expressing a grammatical meaning (such as a tense) using a syntactic construction rather than morphological marking.
  3. The substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name (a species of circumlocution)
  4. The use of a proper name as a shorthand to stand for qualities associated with it.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: periphrasis
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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