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Metonymy

Metonymy is a rhetorical device in which a strong association of a thing is used to represent it. For example – We don’t know how India will respond. Here, India is used to represent the government of India, not its citizens.

Examples of metonymy

The truck hit me from behind. (The truck hit my car from behind.)

The press has made my life hell. (Journalists)

Today, we will be performing Shakespeare. (a play of Shakespeare)

Bush has launched an attack. (America)

I couldn’t catch his tongue. (language)

The Pentagon has made an announcement. (the U.S. dept. of defense)

They will reach the sceptred isles by sunset. (Britian)

The White House is certain of the positive outcome of its actions. (The President and his staff)

Metonymy between a thing and its contents

I didn’t like that book. (the contents of the book)

He has brains. (what is inside his brain – intelligence)

Metonymy and metaphor

There is a subtle difference between metonymy and metaphor. Whereas metaphor uses the similarity between two objects, metonymy uses contiguity or proximity. For example, Shut your trap. That’s a metaphor because trap is being used instead of mouth. There is no connection between a trap and a mouth except that both can open and shut, and are of a particular size.

In metonymy, it’s the commonly recognized association between two things that counts. For example – I have deep respect for the royal crown. Here, crown is so closely associated with monarchy that instead of saying the king or the queen, you can simple say crown. It’s like you keep funny nicknames for people and call them by that instead of their real names. I hope you get it.

Metonymy and synecdoche

Now another one is synecdoche. It also closely resembles metonymy, so we’ll take a look at the differences.

In Synecdoche, the word used in the sentence is a part of the whole like claws for crabs and wheels for cars. Claws and wheels both are physically attached to crabs and cars respectively. Let’s see another example.

Her feet flapped like terrified wings.

Instead of using the word bird, we have used wings as a substitute for bird, and also to stress on the flapping. As wings are a part of a bird, that’s a synecdoche.

In metonymy, the objects are not physically or closely related. For example – The press will be here any minute. Instead of press, we can also say media. The point is that journalists or newspapers are not closely related to the press (the word had come up due to the printing technique in those days), still we use it because we strongly associate the press with media people.

Also see:
Alliteration
Oxymoron
Allusions
Anthimeria