GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — At a campaign stop in Rockford, Ill., not long ago, Mitt Romney sought to convey his feelings for his wife, Ann. “Smitten,” he said.

Not merely in love.

“Yeah, smitten,” he said. “Mitt was smitten.”

It was a classic Mittism, as friends and advisers call the verbal quirks of the Republican presidential candidate. In Romneyspeak, passengers do not get off airplanes, they “disembark.” People do not laugh, they “guffaw.” Criminals do not go to jail, they land in the “big house.” Insults are not hurled, “brickbats” are.

As he seeks the office of commander in chief, Mr. Romney can sometimes seem like an editor in chief, employing a language all his own. It is polite, formal and at times anachronistic, linguistically setting apart a man who frequently struggles to sell himself to the American electorate.

It is most pronounced when he is on the stump and off the cuff, not on the stuffy and rehearsed debate stage. But Mr. Romney offered voters a dose of it during his face-off with President Obama last week, when he coined the infelicitous phrase “binders full of women.”