metonymy

noun

me·ton·y·my mə-ˈtä-nə-mē

plural metonymies

: a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (such as "crown" in "lands belonging to the crown")

metonymic

ˌme-tə-ˈni-mik

adjective

or metonymical

ˌme-tə-ˈni-mi-kəl

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What is the difference between metonymy and synecdoche?

In metonymy, a word that is associated with something is used to refer to that thing, as when crown is used to mean "king" or "queen," or when Mark Antony asks the people of Rome to lend him their ears in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. It's also metonymy when an author's name is used to refer to works written by that person, as in "We are studying Jane Austen." Synecdoche is when the word for a part of something is substituted for the whole thing (such as hired hand for "worker"), or less commonly, when the whole is used to represent a part (as when society denotes "high society"). For more on this pair read the full article.

Examples of metonymy in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

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Or one that lets the signs of starvation, in Auschwitz or Utah, stand in for one another, like a metonymy. —Anna Shechtman, The New Yorker, 20 Dec. 2021 But rather than presenting their fate as an ending, Simpson goes beyond rhetorical strategies of synecdoche and metonymy to represent the whole encased in ice. —Star Tribune, 12 Feb. 2021