Periphrasis

Periphrasis is a trope that replaces the direct name of an object or person with a descriptive turn of phrase singling out their essential feature: "the king of beasts" instead of "the lion," "the Great Kobzar" instead of "Shevchenko," "the blue planet" instead of "Earth." Periphrasis allows repetition to be avoided, an evaluative attitude to be expressed and that trait of the object emphasised which matters in the concrete context. Logical periphrases, which merely describe the object, are distinguished from figurative ones built on metaphor or metonymy. A special variety is the euphemistic periphrasis, which softens an unpleasant notion. Periphrasis is widely used in journalism, oratorical and poetic speech; its excessive accumulation, however, may lead to an artificial grandiloquence of style.