Word.ws English Dictionary

synechdoche

synechdoche is the obsolete spelling 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

Forms of synechdoche

pluralsynechdoches

Questions about synechdoche

What is synechdoche the obsolete spelling of?
Synechdoche is the obsolete spelling of synecdoche.

Words near synechdoche in the dictionary

  1. synecdochize
  2. synecdochized
  3. synecdochizes
  4. synecdochizing
  5. synecdochy
  6. synechdoche
  7. synechdoches
  8. synechia
  9. synechiae
  10. synechial
  11. synechialysis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: synechdoche (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: “synechdoche.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/synechdoche. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.