Lexicon Subtleties: Synecdoche

Blog Entry #87

Definition:

A synecdoche is a rhetoric trope in which a term for a part of something refers to the whole of something.

Pronunciation: 

"sih-nek-duh-kee"

Example:

• "New York won the game", meaning, the New York Yankees baseball team won the game.
• "Can I buy you a glass?"

Usages:

Often used to personify, such as "All hands on deck!"

Types:

• Macrocosm: saying 'I need a hand with this project’, when you really need the entire person’s help for it.
• Microcosm: saying "the world," when the speaker really means a certain country or part of the world.

Related term: Metonymy

Here, the relationship between two things is not part-to-whole or vice-versa, but rather one of being conceptually related. 

Example - "The pen is mightier than the sword" 

"Pen" stands for writing and"sword" refers to physical power

This is not a synecdoche because a pen is not a part of writing, and a sword is not part of physical power. Rather, each of them is related to a concept.