circumlocution

noun circumlocutions

1. uncountable 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.
2. uncountable Unnecessary use of extra words to express an idea, such as a pleonastic phrase (sometimes driven by an attempt at emphatic clarity) or a wordy substitution (the latter driven by euphemistic intent, pedagogic intent, or sometimes loquaciousness alone).
3. uncountable Necessary use of a phrase to circumvent either a vocabulary fault (of speaker or listener) or a lexical gap, either monolingually or in translation. 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).
4. countable An instance of such usage; a roundabout expression, whether an inadvisable one or a necessary one.

Similar: ambages, periphrasis