metonymy

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /mɪˈtɑnəmi/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /mɪˈtɒnəmi/
• Rhymes: -ɒnəmi

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” Put it on the plastic – material “plastic” for object credit card

metonymy (countable and uncountable, plural metonymies)

1. (rhetoric) 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.

   Hypernyms: trope, figure of speech

   Hyponym: synecdoche

   Coordinate term: metaphor

   • 1835, L[arret] Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, →OCLC, page 7:

     Metonymy does new names impose,
     And things for things by near relation shews.

   • 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.

Coordinate terms

• figurativeness
• metaphor
• synecdoche

 

Derived terms

• metonym
• metonymic
• metonymically
• metonymous

 

Translations

figure of speech

Afrikaans: metonimie Armenian: փոխանունություն (hy) (pʻoxanunutʻyun), մետոնիմիա (hy) (metonimia) Azerbaijani: metonimiya Catalan: metonímia (ca) Chinese: Cantonese: 借代 (ze3 doi6) Mandarin: 換喻／换喻 (huànyù), 轉喻／转喻 (zhuǎnyù) Czech: metonymie f Danish: metonymi c Dutch: metonymia (nl) f Finnish: metonymia (fi) French: métonymie (fr) f Galician: metonimia f Georgian: მეტონიმია (meṭonimia) German: Metonymie (de) f, Namenvertauschung f Greek: μετωνυμία (el) f (metonymía) Hungarian: metonímia (hu), érintkezésen alapuló névátvitel Icelandic: nafnhvörf n pl, merkingarskipti n pl Irish: meatonaime f Italian: metonimia (it) f Japanese: 換喩法 (かんゆほう, kan'yuhō), 換喩 (ja) (かんゆ, kan'yu) Korean: 환유 (hwanyu) Latin: metonymia f Norwegian: Bokmål: talemåte m, metonymi m Polish: metonimia (pl) f Portuguese: metonímia (pt) f Romanian: metonimie (ro) f Russian: метони́мия (ru) f (metonímija) Sicilian: mitunimìa f, mitunimia f Slovene: metonimija (sl) f Spanish: metonimia (es) f Swedish: metonymi (sv) c Tagalog: halituring Turkish: ad aktarması (tr), düz değişmece, mecazımürsel (tr), metonimi Vietnamese: phép hoán dụ

metonym — see metonym

See also

• metalepsis
• Category:English metonyms
• hyponymy

Further reading

• metonymy on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• trope (literature) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “metonymy”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.