- 1
The habit of talking all the way around an idea instead of saying it straight. You use extra words, side paths, and soft phrases when a short sentence would have done. People do this for different reasons: to be polite, to sound careful, to hide a hard fact, or because they are nervous and cannot land on the point. It is a formal, slightly word. In everyday English you are more likely to hear beating around the bush, talking in circles, or not getting to the point. Circumlocution is not a compliment when a teacher or an editor uses it — it usually means “too many words, please say it ” — though in diplomacy a little going-around can be the whole point. It names the practice, not one single sentence.
迂迴說法、拐彎抹角
組成From Latin circumlocūtiō (“the act of speaking around”). By the pieces: circum- (“around”) + locution (“talk”) — talking around something. Probably a calque of Ancient Greek περίφρασις (períphrasis).
同家族的字
- locutionsame locution “a way of speaking”
- elocutionsame “speak” piece
- circumlocutorythe adjective from this noun
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
circumlocutionnoun/ˌsɜːkəmləˈkjuːʃən/
- 1
A roundabout or indirect way of speaking; thus
- Circumlocution is a large deſcription either to ſette forth a thyng more gorgiouſlie, or els to hyde it, if the eares cannot beare the open ſpeakyng: or when with fewe woordes we cannot open our meanyng, to ſpeake it more largely.
- His Majeſty leaves the choice to your ſelf, and requires from you a direct Anſwer without circumlocution or bargaining with him […]
- 2
A roundabout or indirect way of speaking; thus:
- 3
A roundabout or indirect way of speaking; thus:
- A technical word, such as hyperkalemia or hypoallergenic, can be glossed for general audiences with a circumlocution, such as "high potassium level" or "less likely to cause allergies" (respectively).
- It may seem quite straightforward to render line 15 metrically regular by means of a grammatical trick: "the style as bright as soul". However, the stylistic feature of the adjectival compound does not occur in isolation but is employed again in the following line, "dem Staubfaden himmelswüst", where a grammatical circumlocution in translation would be metrically disadvantageous. Both compounds, "seelenhell" as well as "himmelswüst", should therefore be translated as compounds. When Michael Hamburger remarks that German "lends itself to the formation of compound words in a way that English does not" (in Celan 1988: 24), he probably refers to nouns such as "Türspalt" or "Algenteilchen".
- 4
An instance of such usage; a roundabout expression, whether an inadvisable one or a necessary one.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。