"I've been a fighting character," he said, and this was a periphrastic way of referring to his old occupation in which he evidently took great pleasure; "but now I'm a Miracle.
"Faces and Places"
Henry William Lucy
A tall, lank-haired man, looking more like an undertaker than a divine of any denomination, read straight through, without a syllable of preface, the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and then, kneeling down, began a rambling, extemporaneous prayer, the main object of which seemed to be, to address the Deity by as many periphrastic adjurations as possible.
"Border and Bastille"
George A. Lawrence
Its compound phrases are either periphrastic or metaphorical; its simple monosyllables are generally those of the current language in an older form.
"The English Language"
Robert Gordon Latham