Periphrasis (per-if’-ra-sis): The substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name (a species of circumlocution); or, conversely, the use of a proper name as a shorthand to stand for qualities associated with it. (Circumlocutions are rhetorically useful as euphemisms, as a method of amplification, or to hint at something without stating it.)
Let’s go to death on a bun for lunch.
Those shoes are so Hollywood.
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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
