Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A rhetorical figure or trope assumed by some ancient writers, and supposed to consist in substituting a word for a synonym or homonym. which latter is at the same time understood in a metaphorical or transferred sense: as, “sable caverns” for “black caverns,” this in its turn meaning “dark or gloomy caverns.”
- noun In chem., same as
metalepsy .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Rhet.) The continuation of a trope in one word through a succession of significations, or the union of two or more tropes of a different kind in one word.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun rhetoric The
metonymical substitution of one word by another which is itself ametonym . - noun rhetoric The result of a
series ofmetaphors - noun rhetoric The unexpressed serial application of
tropes of substitution.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun substituting metonymy of one figurative sense for another
Etymologies
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Examples
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I’d call it metalepsis — the article made for the firm, and the firm for the people running it.
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Yes - you discovered the intertextual echoes I so carefully manufactured -- and so my theory of metalepsis is proved to be true!
On The Trail of NT Wrong, Part 3 James F. McGrath 2008
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The Kingpin's Throne, the seat of power, will become a a metalepsis that represents the plot of this entire run and, I argue, is its ultimate theme.
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In fact, as de Man goes on to say, "the metaphor is not a metaphor since it has no proper meaning, no sens propre" (RCC 201) and could more properly be called "the metonymic reversal of past and present that rhetoricians call metalepsis" (RCC 201).
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But everyone presently apprehends that this expression is figurative, the abstract being put for the concrete by a metalepsis, and charity is said to do that which a man endued with that grace will do.
Pneumatologia 1616-1683 1967
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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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"In a metalepsis, a word is substituted metonymically for a word in a previous trope, so that a metalepsis can be called, maddeningly but accurately, a metonymy of a metonymy."
Jihad Monitor 2010
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This film is a brilliantly executed symbol that expresses the tension of the experience of Infinite Being in metalepsis with being at the eschaton.
Jihad Monitor 2010
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a thematic reading and its terms — death, finitude, history, temporality, and mutability — to a rhetorical reading and its terms — metaphor, metonymy, metalepsis — should not mislead us into thinking that the thematic has simply been left behind, surpassed, as though de Man had succeeded in reducing temporality and history to a question of merely tropological substitutions and transformations.
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I’d call it metalepsis — the article made for the firm, and the firm for the people running it.mischiefQuote
vendingmachine commented on the word metalepsis
In a metalepsis, a word is substituted metonymically for a word in a previous trope so that a metalepsis can be called, maddeningly but accurately, a metonymy of a metonymy."
July 3, 2015
slumry commented on the word metalepsis
also known as transumption
July 4, 2015