Word of the Day:
metonymy
What It Means
The use of a single characteristic or part of an object, concept or phenomenon to identify the entire object, concept, phenomenon or a related object.
A metonym.
Metonymy in Context
“...the principle of metonymy is simply to substitute for the plain name of a thing a name or phrase based on something connected with it.”
Did You Know?
From Late Latin metonymia, from Ancient Greek μετωνυμίᾱ (metōnumíā, “change of name”), from μετά (metá, “other”) + ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: metonymy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “metonymy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/metonymy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.