synecdoche

=synecdoche=

[|Hear It!] (sĭ-něk'də-kē)

– A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole or, occasionally, the whole is used to represent a part. Examples: To refer to a boat a “sail”, to refer to a car as “wheels”; to refer to the violins, violas, etc. in an orchestra as “the strings.” **Different than metonymy, in which one thing is represented by another thing that is commonly physically associated with it (but is not necessarily a part of it), i.e., referring to a monarch as “the crown” or the President as “The White House.

__Literary Example__ “The mouths to feed were too much for my father to bear.” This example comes from a novel called The Broken Mirror, by Kirk Douglas. The “mouths to feed” are the parts of the hungry people that the author is trying to describe.

__More Examples__ • "mouths to feed" for hungry people • "white hair" for an elderly person • "The Press" for news media.
 * "The Bones" for the whole skeleton [[image:Equine-dist-forelimb-bones.png width="243" height="335" align="left"]]

__Citations__ •Douglas, Kirk. The Broken Mirror. New York: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, 1997. •"Definition of synecdoche." Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary. 2006. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. 27 Sep 2007 <[|http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synecdoche>.] •"Synecdoche - Definitions from Dictionary.com." Dictionary.com. 2007. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. 27 Sep 2007 <[|http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/synecdoche>.]

Created By JWachman