Word.ws English Dictionary

antonomasy

antonomasy is the alternative form of antonomasia.

Meaning of antonomasia

Noun

antonomasia (countable and uncountable, plural antonomasias)

  1. (rhetoric) The substitution of an epithet or title in place of a proper noun.
  2. (rhetoric) Use of a proper name to suggest its most obvious quality or aspect.
    • Antonomasia proper names imparts
      From kindred, country, epithets, and arts.1835, L[arret] Langley, “[Rhetorical Figures.] Antonomasia.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 70

Forms of antonomasy

pluralantonomasies

Questions about antonomasy

What is antonomasy the alternative form of?
Antonomasy is the alternative form of antonomasia.

Words near antonomasy in the dictionary

  1. antonomasias
  2. antonomasies
  3. antonomastic
  4. antonomastical
  5. antonomastically
  6. antonomasy
  7. Antonopoulos
  8. Antonopouloses
  9. Antonov
  10. Antonovka
  11. Antonovkas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: antonomasy (page history and authors); antonomasia (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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