euphuisms

Noun

euphuism (countable and uncountable, plural euphuisms)

1. (historical, rhetoric, uncountable) An ornate style of writing (in Elizabethan England) marked by the excessive use of alliteration, antithesis and mythological similes.
   • The second was a fancy, which amounts to a mania, for similes, strung together in endless lists[…]. It is impossible to open a page of Euphues without finding an example of this eccentric and tasteless trick, and in it, as far as in any single thing, must be found the recipe for euphuism, pure and...1887, George Saintsbury, “Early Elizabethan prose”, in A History of Elizabethan Literature
2. (countable) An instance of euphuism.
   • I have not the slightest faith in Carlyle. In ten years–possibly in five–he will be remembered only as a butt for sarcasm. His linguistic Euphuisms might very well have been taken as prima facie evidence of his philosophic ones; they were the froth which indicated, first, the shallowness, and...1844, Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia