Words & WritingGreek → English
Synecdoche
/sɪˈnɛkdəki/noun
A figure of speech in which a part names the whole, or the whole names a part.
The Greek roots
σύν
sún
with, together
ἐκ
ek
out of
δέχομαι
dékhomai
to receive, take
Literally: “a taking together”
The story of the word
Greek rhetoricians listed συνεκδοχή among the tropes, and the sense of the name is bookkeeping: one thing is received along with another. English absorbed it through Latin synecdoche in the fifteenth century, spelling intact and pronunciation mangled ever since. Every crew called all hands, every worker called a hired hand, is using it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
Same family
metonymydogmadecade
In a sentence
Calling a car "a new set of wheels" is synecdoche, four parts standing in for the whole machine.
The teacher spent a week on metonymy and synecdoche before anyone could tell them apart.