metonymy

Metonymy, a figure of speech which substitutes a quality or attribute of something for the thing itself, by a kind of conventional abbreviation, as the fair to mean ‘the fair sex’, the deep to mean ‘the deep sea’, the bench for the judiciary. A closely related figure is that of synecdoche, in which a part is substituted for the whole (per head, to mean ‘per person’), or a whole is substituted for a part (Pakistan, to mean the Pakistani cricket team).

METONYMY. A FIGURE OF SPEECH which designates something by the NAME of something associated with it: the Crown substituting for monarchy, the stage for the theatre, No. 10 Downing Street for the British Prime Minister, the White House for the US President. A word used metonymically (crown, as above) is a metonym Metonymy is closely related to and sometimes hard to distinguish from METAPHOR. It has sometimes been seen as a kind of SYNECDOCHE and sometimes as containing synecdoche. Both metaphor and metonymy express association, metaphor through comparison, metonymy through contiguity and possession. Many standard items of vocabulary are metonymic. A red-letter day is important, like the feast days marked in red in church calendars. The word redcap (a porter) originally referred to a piece of red flannel tied for visibility around the caps of baggage carriers at New York's Grand Central Station. On the level of SLANG, a redneck is a stereotypical member of the white rural working class in the Southern US, originally a reference to necks sunburned from working in the fields. See FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE.

metonymy (rhet.) substitution for the name of a thing the name of an attribute of it, etc. XVI. First in late L. form metōnymia — Gr. metōnumíā, f. metá META- + ónoma, ónuma NAME; see -Y3.