Opposite of "straight talk"
In the noble spirit of one immortal oratorm when he so colorfully advised our hero . . .
This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.
. . . I can myself do little less than recommend vigorously not timorously, for timor no more profits a man than it does a mouse or a moth, any of the following fine and splendid formulations of art:
- chatty
- circuitous
- circumlocutory
- desultory
- diffuse
- digressive
- discursive
- evasive
- gabby
- garrulous
- long-winded
- loquacious
- maundering
- meandering
- palaverous
- prolix
- rambling
- talkative
- turgid
- vague
- verbose
- waffling
- windy
- wordy
and of course, my personal favorite word for vexing prattlers wont to sacrifice wit’s soul on the altar of florid flourish:
• Polonian
If you are actually talking about someone who waffles on long-windedly before getting to the point (rather than someone who doesn’t say things straight out and honestly, which is how I too would understand ‘straight talk’), the first idiom that comes to mind is beating around the bush.
The opposite of a familiar and straightforward idiom would be a strange and impenetrable circumlocution. I suggest "obfuscatory tergiversation."