Words & WritingGreek → English
Antonomasia
/ˌæntənəˈmeɪʒə/noun
The figure of speech that swaps an epithet for a proper name, or a proper name for a general quality.
The Greek roots
ἀντί
antí
instead of, in place of
ὄνομα
ónoma
name
Literally: “naming instead”
The story of the word
Calling Shakespeare the Bard is antonomasia; so is calling a traitor a Judas. The Greek says exactly what the figure does, one name standing in the place of another. Roman rhetoricians catalogued it, and English handbooks of the 1580s brought it over untranslated along with a shipload of other Greek figure names.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
onomatopoeiasynonymanonymouspseudonym
In a sentence
Sports writing runs on antonomasia: the Special One, the King, the Iceman.
By antonomasia the whole country called him the General.