Periphrasis

In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of more than one word to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one inflected word. The comparison may be within a language or between languages. For example, "more happy" is periphrastic in comparison to "happier", and English "I will eat" is periphrastic in comparison to Spanish comeré.

The term originates from the Greek word περιφράζομαι periphrazomai 'talking around', and was originally used for examples that came up in ancient Greek. In epic poetry, it was common to use periphrasis in examples such as "the sons of the Achaeans" (meaning the Achaeans), or "How did such words escape the fence of your teeth?" (adding a layer of poetic imagery to "your teeth"). Sometimes periphrastic forms were used for verbs that would otherwise be unpronounceable. For example, the Greek verb δείκνυμι, deiknumi, 'to show', has a hypothetical form *δεδείκνται, dedeikntai, which has the disallowed consonant cluster -knt-, so one would instead say δεδειγμένοι εἰσί, dedeigmenoi eisi, using a periphrasis with a participle.

Periphrastic forms are a characteristic of analytic languages, whereas the absence of periphrasis is a characteristic of synthetic languages. While periphrasis concerns all categories of syntax, it is most visible with verb catena.