Etymologically
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metonymia

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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