A winding or circuitous way of speaking; an indirect or roundabout manner of expression; circumlocution.
From Latin 'ambages' meaning 'a going around' or 'windings,' from 'ambire' meaning 'to go around.' Borrowed into English during the medieval period, though now quite rare.
This word captures something Latinate languages loved—the idea that some speech takes a circular path to its destination, and Medieval scholars borrowed it to describe the ornate rhetoric they admired in classical texts.
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