27Oct Tuesday, October 21, 2008 – Synecdoche

Synecdoche \si-NEK-duh-kee\, noun:

a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole or whole for a part or general for the special or vice versa

Photographers had to resort to visual synecdoche, hoping that a small part of the scene — a wailing child, an emaciated mother, a pile of corpses in a freshly dug trench — would suggest the horrors of the whole.
— Paul Gray, Looking At Cataclysms, Time, August 1, 1994

We’re using the part-for-whole type of synecdoche, for instance, when we describe a smart person as a “brain.”
— We Live by the Brand, Hartford Courant, August 9, 1995

By 1388, from Middle Latin synodoche, from Late Latin synecdoche, from Greek synekdokhe, literally “a receiving together or jointly,” from synekdekhesthai “supply a thought or word, take with something else,” from syn- “with” + ek “out” + dekhesthai “to receive,” related to dokein “seem good”.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for synecdoche

Oddly, Dictionary.com used this word two days in a row, so I’ll skip the second day’s usage and move on the the following day’s word. Maybe I should try to post twice as many as usual for this word? Let’s see how that goes.

I love when people use odd words as their user names. It makes my job so much easier!