metonymia

Forms

metōnymia f (genitive metōnymiae); first declension^[1][2] It is often spelled metonimia, sometimes metonomia or metonumia.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek μετωνυμία (metōnumía, “change of name”),^[1][2][5] from μετά (metá) and ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”).^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cicero, in the Orator, says that the grammarians call it by this name what the rhetoricians call hypallage, because names are exchanged.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Festus defines it as the trope by which the container stands for the thing contained, or the higher for the lower, citing Ennius.^[3] Quintilian calls it the putting of one name for another (“nominis pro nomine positio”).^[3] Later grammarians such as Sacerdos and Isidore of Seville kept it,^[3] Isidore giving examples such as “theatra plaudunt”, “the theatres applaud”, for the people in them.^[6] English took it over in the 1560s, from French and directly from Late Latin.^[5]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero names it as the grammarians' term.^[3][4]
• c. 35–95/96 AD – Quintilian defines it.^[3][4]
• 2nd half of the 2nd century AD – Festus defines it with examples from Ennius.^[3][4]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville defines it with examples.^[6][4]
• 1560s – English borrows it as metonymy.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. (rhetoric) metonymy, the replacing of the name of a thing by the name of something associated with it.^[1][2][7]

Usage notes

The native Latin terms are denominatio^[2] and immutatio.^[7]

References

1. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
7. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn