roundabout and unnecessarily wordy - had a preference for circumlocutious (or circumlocutory) rather than forthright expression - "A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,/ Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle/ With words and meanings."-T.S.Eliot ('ambagious' is archaic) • Syn: circumlocutious, periphrastic, ambagious • Similar to: indirect • Derivationally related forms: ambage (for: ambagious), periphrasis (for: periphrastic), circumlocution (for: circumlocutious)
