Word.ws English Dictionary

synecdoches

synecdoches is the plural of synecdoche.

Meaning of synecdoche

Noun

synecdoche (countable and uncountable, plural synecdoches)

  1. (rhetoric) A figure of speech that uses the name of a part of something to represent the whole, or the whole to represent a part, or a specific kind or instance to represent the general category, or the general category to represent a specific kind or instance, or the constituent material to represent the thing made from it.
    • Synecdoche the whole for part will take,
      Or part for whole, just for the metre's sake.1835, L[arret] Langley, “[The Seven Tropes.] Synecdoche.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 9
  2. (rhetoric) The use of this figure of speech.
    Synonyms:
    synecdochy

Questions about synecdoches

What is synecdoches the plural of?
Synecdoches is the plural of synecdoche.

Words near synecdoches in the dictionary

  1. syndynamic
  2. syne
  3. synecdochal
  4. synecdochally
  5. synecdoche
  6. synecdoches
  7. synecdochic
  8. synecdochical
  9. synecdochically
  10. synecdochies
  11. synecdochisation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: synecdoches (page history and authors); synecdoche (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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Cite this entry: “synecdoches.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/synecdoches. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.