Definition:
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated (such as "crown" for "royalty"). Metonymy is also the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it, such as describing someone's clothing to characterize the individual. Adjective: metonymic. See Status Details in Tom Wolfe's Descriptions.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "change of name"Examples & Observations:
- "The pen is mightier than the sword."
(Edward Bulwer-Lytton) - "Her voice is full of money."
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby) - "On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again."
(Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep) - "Many standard items of vocabulary are metonymic. A red-letter day is important, like the feast days marked in red on church calendars. Red tide, the marine disease that kills fish, takes its name from the colour of one-celled, plant-like animals in the water. . . . On the level of slang, a redneck is a stereotypical member of the white rural working class in the Southern U.S., originally a reference to necks sunburned from working in the fields."
(Connie C. Eble, "Metonymy," The Oxford Companion to the English Language, 1992) - "Bush has bombed Afghanistan and Iraq."
- "The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings."
- "The B.L.T. left without paying."
(waitress referring to a customer) - "A metonymy neither states nor implies the connections between the objects involved in it. . . . We must already know that the objects are related, if the metonymy is to be devised or understood. Thus, metaphor creates the relation between its objects, while metonymy presupposes that relation."
(Hugh Bredin, "Metonymy," Poetics Today, 1984)
Pronunciation: me-TON-uh-me
Also Known As: denominatio, misnamer, transmutation
