Words & WritingGreek → English
Metonymy
/mɪˈtɑːnɪmi/noun
Naming something by something closely associated with it, as when the crown means the monarchy.
The Greek roots
μετά
metá
change of
ὄνυμα
ónyma
name
Literally: “change of name”
The story of the word
Greek rhetoricians listed μετωνυμία separately from synecdoche, where a part stands for the whole, and where exactly the line falls has been argued over for two thousand years without resolution. English took the term in the 1560s along with the rest of the classical rhetoric kit. Newspapers run on it: Downing Street said, the Pentagon denied, Hollywood is worried.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1560s
Same family
synonymanonymouspseudonymeponym
In a sentence
Calling the whole crew a hundred hands is metonymy.
The essay is a long complaint about metonymy in political reporting.