Words & WritingGreek → English
Catachresis
/ˌkætəˈkriːsɪs/noun
The use of a word in a way its sense does not license, whether as a blunder or as a deliberate figure.
The Greek roots
κατά
katá
against, contrary to
χρῆσθαι
chrêsthai
to use
Literally: “misuse”
The story of the word
The rhetoricians' name for a word wrenched out of its proper use: Milton's blind mouths, Hamlet taking arms against a sea of troubles. Many dead catachreses are now invisible, since a table has legs and a bottle has a neck and nobody hears a metaphor in either. In ordinary Greek κατάχρησις meant plain misuse, before the grammarians decided it was a figure worth keeping.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
cataloguecatastrophechrestomathy
In a sentence
Calling a wireless network a pipe is a catachresis that nobody objects to.
The essay defends catachresis as the engine of new vocabulary rather than a fault.