Definition:
(1) A word used in a figurative sense to remedy a gap in the lexicon; in Cicero's words, a metaphor "in which you take what you have not got from somewhere else."
(2) A type of strained metaphor that is logically misused but may be figuratively effective.
See also:
Examples and Observations:
- "A catachretic metaphor is used to fill a gap in the vocabulary. New discoveries are described by means of metaphors when no literal terms exist. . . .
"When a science develops and new discoveries are made, new metaphors may be applied. . . .
"Catachretic metaphors can be isolated metaphors, but very often we find groups of metaphors all taken from the same donor field. . . . Thus, where we find blood vessels-as-rivers, we also find tributaries, recanalisations, inflow, outflow, bridges, et cetera. It seems as if such metaphors are 'natural' extensions of the metaphorical images that were first--catachretically--introduced."
(Geraldine W. van Rijn-van Tongeren, Metaphors in Medical Texts. Rodopi, 1997) - "There is a great variety of expressions often used as examples of metaphor that are nevertheless hardly ever felt as tropes. One common set uses body parts to represent the parts of material objects: 'leg of a table,' 'head of a pin,' 'eye of a needle,' 'foot of a mountain,' etc. . . . We cannot easily answer the question "if it is not the head (of a pin), then what is it?" With a true metaphor we can. . . . Max Black, along with most rhetoricians, considers them as types of catachresis which Black defines as the use of a word in a new sense in order to remedy a gap in the vocabulary."
(J. David Sapir, "The Anatomy of Metaphor," in The Social Use of Metaphor, edited by J.D. Sapir and J.C. Crocker. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1977)
Pronunciation: kat-a-KREE-tic MET-ah-for
Also Known As: catachresis, catachrestic metaphor
