Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- In rhet.: Pertaining to, consisting in, or characterized by catachresis; applied in an improper signification. Wrested from the right meaning or form; contrary to proper use; forced; far-fetched.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Belonging to, or in the manner of, a catachresis; constituting, characterized by or given to catachresis; wrested from its natural sense or form; forced; far-fetched.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective constituting or related to
catachresis
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective constituting or characterized by or given to catachresis
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The first mode is synecdochical, the second common, the third metonymical; I add that the third might properly be called catachrestic if we attend to the just distinction of these members.
The Works of James Arminius, Vol. 3 1560-1609 1956
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Its plural is catachreses, its adjectival forms catachrestic and catachrestical.
Catachresis and the amusing, awful and artificial cathedral 2009
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In short, the "metaphorical substitution" is in fact a self-undoing trope that self-deconstructs into the catachrestic imposition of a name.
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But I readily endure a catachrestic metalepsis, when it is evident concerning a thing, although it is my wish that our enunciations were always the best accommodated to the natures of the things themselves.
The Works of James Arminius, Vol. 1 1560-1609 1956
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For I had examined various passages in your writings, and in them I found that the word was used by you in the last sense, which you here call catachrestic.
The Works of James Arminius, Vol. 3 1560-1609 1956
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The whole party, however, and a more amiable never existed, were scared and disgusted into this by the catachrestic language and skeleton half-truths of the systematic divines of the Synod of Dort on the one hand, and by the sickly broodings of the Pietists and Solomon's-Song preachers on the other.
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Henry Nelson Coleridge 1820
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_OED_ notices this catachrestic form of "beatified"
Anti-Achitophel (1682) Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden Elkanah Settle 1686
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