Metonymy

Metonymy flashed up on the old peepers recently and, as a word that I was not familiar with, was cause for investigation and reflection. There is a very good example by Elif Batuman in a recent blog. I don’t think I will forget the link between Ajda – Pekhan or tea glass and the meaning of metonymy.

Mr Collins has a much less vibrant description in his excellent book of words

the substitution of a word referring to an attribute for the thing that is meant, as for example the use of the crown to refer to a monarch

However, I was instructed at the end of this definition to - compare synecdoche!

You can not go around giving orders like that to a young lad without there being consequences. I confess I have wrestled with synecdoche almost as long as I have wrestled with the demon drink and sins of the flesh. I have used mortification of the body and spiritual exercises to cope with this word but it is no use. It has me defeated.

Mr Collins may briefly define it thus

a figure of speech in which a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part, as in 50 head of cattle for 50 cows, or the army for a soldier

and be back at the rashers and eggs in no time, washing it down with lashings of tea I’m sure, but I am destroyed. The little worm is there; the tautological quantum elusiveness of the smile on Schrödinger’s Cat:- a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part

I’m extirpated!

(Ed. There, there. Come and sit down and have a cup of tea. Do you want me to call your Mammy?)