Metonymy

Klaus-Uwe Panther & Günter Radden
Table of contents

Metonymy (Greek µετονυµία ‘change of name’) is one of the major figures of speech recognized in classical rhetoric. One of the earliest definitions of metonymy is attributed to the treatise Rhetorica ad Herennium (see Koch 1999: 140). The anonymous author characterizes metonymy as “a trope that takes its expression from near and close things [‘ab rebus propinquis et finitimis’] by which we can comprehend a word that is not denominated by its proper word” (translation by Koch 1999: 141). This ancient characterization already points to the notions of contiguity and substitution, which have ever since been criterial in distinguishing metonymy from metaphor.

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