In the early 1980's, a fellow teacher and friend, Mrs. Deane Schloemer, shared this list with me; a friend of hers in California had mailed it to her. Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone; I had to try my hand at this, and developed two additional pages.
About this time another friend and co-worker, Hollye Kingston, contributed a fourth page. See what you think. Here is the first of the four pages. Links at the bottom of this page will take you to the remaining pages. Try to translate them on your own; if you give up, click on the link at the bottom of the page to see the solution. Enjoy!!
Circumlocution is a verbal vice opposed to the virtue of brevity. It consists of making the simple complex, the obvious obscure and at times, the familiar enjoyably strange. Here are a number of circumlocutions --- known as PERIPHRASTICS. Unravel them."
1. A mobile section of petrified matter agglomerates no bryophytes.
2. Desist from enumerating your fowl prior to their emergence from the shell.
3. Scintillation is not always identification for an auric substance.
4. A plethora of culinary specialists has a deleterious effect upon the quality
of purees, consommes, and other soluble pabula.
5. A chronic disposition to inquiry deprived the domestic carnivorous quadruped
of its vital quality.
6. It is in the realm of possibility to entice an equine member of the animal
kingdom to a source of oxidized hydrogen; however, it is not possible to
force him to imbibe.
7. Persons deficient in the faculty of determining values move with impetuosity
into places which purely spiritual beings view with trepidation.
8. If John persists without respite in a constant and prolonged exertion of
physical or intellectual effort, he will develop into a youth slow and
blunted in perception and sensibility.
9. Immediately upon the absence of the domesticated carnivorous feline, the
common house rodent proceeds to engage in sportive capers.
10. A round bulging vessel made of staves bound with hoops that is destitute
of contents is productive of the most deafening din.
11. Products of ingenuity are the offspring of exigency.
| Cheat on the answers to these Periphrastics |
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