Definition
Periphrasis is the use of multiple words or a roundabout phrase to express what could be stated more concisely. In legal contexts, the term describes drafting or pleading that substitutes descriptive language for a single precise term — whether out of stylistic choice, imprecision, or deliberate avoidance of a word of art. Bouvier's usage points to the most practically important legal dimension: in criminal pleading, certain terms of art (traitorously, burglariously, feloniously) carried such specific legal weight that substituting any periphrastic equivalent — however accurate as a description — was insufficient to sustain the indictment. Periphrasis in that context was not merely inelegant; it was fatal.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The use of a longer expression instead of a shorter one with a similar meaning; in grammar, expressing a tense or other feature through a syntactic construction rather than morphological marking.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Refers the reader to "periphrase," indicating a rhetorical figure of speech — the use of more words than necessary to express an idea.
In ordinary English and in rhetoric, periphrasis is stylistically neutral or even valued — a literary device that adds color or avoids directness. In legal drafting and criminal pleading, the judgment is reversed: periphrasis signals imprecision and, in the historical common-law indictment context, could mean the instrument failed as a matter of law. The gap is not merely tonal — it is the difference between acceptable expression and a void pleading.
Common Confusion
Periphrasis is closely related to circumlocution, and the historical dictionaries treat them as near-synonyms. The distinction, where one exists, is that circumlocution more often carries a connotation of deliberate evasion, while periphrasis is the broader rhetorical category covering any roundabout expression, including innocent verbosity. In legal research, the terms appear interchangeably and the distinction rarely matters. More consequentially, researchers should not confuse descriptive periphrasis — acceptable in many drafting contexts — with the substitution of periphrastic language for indispensable words of art in criminal pleadings, where the doctrine operated as a strict formal requirement, not a stylistic preference.
Why It Matters in Research
The operative legal significance of periphrasis is concentrated in the historical common-law doctrine of criminal pleading, and researchers working in that area need to understand two things.
First, the requirement of words of art in indictments was a technical rule with real consequences. An indictment that described treasonous conduct without using "traitorously," or a burglary without "burglariously," could be — and was — quashed on that ground alone. This rule generated substantial litigation and commentary in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When reading historical indictments, treatises on pleading, or early appellate decisions challenging indictment sufficiency, understanding that periphrastic substitution was the specific defect alleged helps researchers locate the correct analytical framework.
Second, the doctrine has largely been abolished or substantially relaxed in modern criminal procedure. Most American jurisdictions now require only that an indictment state the offense in terms sufficient to give notice and to allow a double jeopardy defense — a functional standard that has little patience for strict word-of-art requirements. Researchers moving from historical to modern sources should not assume continuity: the periphrasis problem as Bouvier framed it is largely a historical phenomenon in American practice, though vestiges survive in jurisdictions with conservative pleading traditions or statutory requirements that preserve specific charging language.
Outside criminal pleading, periphrasis appears as a drafting criticism in contract and statutory interpretation commentary — courts and commentators occasionally note that periphrastic drafting creates ambiguity where a single precise term would not. This usage is descriptive rather than doctrinal.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Bouvier's agree on the core definition: circumlocution, or the use of many words to express what one would convey. The entries are brief, reflecting that periphrasis is more a concept used to analyze other doctrines than a freestanding doctrine itself.
Bouvier's is the most instructive of the three. Its entry moves immediately from the general definition to the specific legal application — the indispensable words of art in criminal indictments — and gives concrete examples (traitorously, burglariously, feloniously). This is not a trivial addition. Bouvier is flagging a rule that occupied serious attention in nineteenth-century pleading practice, and his entry implicitly distinguishes between periphrasis that is merely verbose and periphrasis that defeats the legal instrument entirely. The entry appears to have been cut off mid-sentence, suggesting the original contained additional examples of mandatory charging terms.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the grammatical or rhetorical dimensions of periphrasis that occupy modern usage, and any application outside criminal pleading. Researchers looking for periphrasis in contract drafting criticism or statutory construction will find no support in these sources and should look to rhetoric texts and legal writing scholarship instead.