metonymy

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English

Etymology

From Late Latin metonymia, from Ancient Greek μετωνυμίᾱ (metōnumíā, “change of name”), from μετά (metá, “other”) + ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”).

Noun

Examples
  • The White House released its official report today.
    “The White House” for “The presidential administration”
  • The Crown has enacted a new social security policy.
    “The Crown” for “The government of the United Kingdom”
  • A crowd of fifty heads — “head” for person
  • Put it on the plastic — material “plastic” for object credit card

metonymy (countable and uncountable, plural metonymies)

  1. The use of a single characteristic or part of an object, concept or phenomenon to identify the entire object, concept, phenomenon or a related object.
    Coordinate term: metaphor
    Hypernyms: trope, figure of speech
    Hyponyms: synecdoche, synecdochy
    • 1891 September, William Minto, “Practical talks on writing English”, in Theodor Flood, editor, The Chautauquan, volume 13, →OCLC, page 279:
      ...the principle of metonymy is simply to substitute for the plain name of a thing a name or phrase based on something connected with it.
  2. (countable) A metonym.

Derived terms

Translations

metonym — see metonym

See also

Further reading

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