Epithet - a rhetorical term for an adjective (or adjective phrase) used to characterize a person or thing.
Examples:
- I had reached a delicate corner.
- The idle road stretched for miles.
- All I can say is that he had an honest end.
Semantically epithets split into:
- Associated (wide sea)
- Unassociated (bootless cries)
- Fixed (happy birthday)
Structurally epithets split into:
- Simple (careful attention)
- Compound (cloud-shapen giant)
- Phrase (I-am-not-that-kind-of-girl look)
- Reversed (a hook of a nose)
- Transferred (merry hours)
- Two-step (an unnaturally mild day)
- String of epithets (good for nothing brute)
- is circumlocution, talking around the subject rather than directly what perhaps might be said in the circumstances.
Examples:
- It is not that James is welcome or otherwise, or that he is sometimes here or not. I do wonder, though, if he might be thinking what it's all about. (= I don't like James)
- When I am with you, my toes tingle and my knees are weak. The world is a better place altogether and I find myself giving my fortune to beggars, and I am a beggar before you, craving a smile, a whim. (= I love you)
http://changingminds.org/techniques/language/figures_speech/periphrasis.htm