Dictionary

long way around en · NOUN

Meanings

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see long, way, around.
2. An indirect approach.
   • It seems that people think of simple ways to say things or know them, but I was always taking the long way around. 2014, Jesse Ball, Silence Once Begun, →ISBN, page 182:
   • We often ask why God takes such long ways around to his stated objectives. 2014, Robert W. Jenson, Stephen John Wright, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation, →ISBN:
   • That was the long way around of saying that I tend to use terribly crude debugging techniques with unsafe printfs. 2009, Peter Seibel, Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming, →ISBN, page 268:
   • Acknowledging Annibale Carracci is the long way around to Rubens, but it is the route of choice because Annibale so aptly exemplifies a nagging notion we have about the difficulty of looking at painting in general and individual paintings in particular. 1986, Frank Stella, Working Space, →ISBN, page 54:

Forms