Brewer's: Circumbendibus

(A). He took a circumbendibus, i.e. he went round about and round about before coming to the point.

“Partaking of what scholars call the periphrastic and ambagitory, and the vulgar the circumbendibus.” —Sir W. Scott: Waverley, chap. xxiv.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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