Meanings
plural cryptonymies
- The use of code names or cryptonyms.
The concepts of cryptonymy and preservative repression (the latter discussed directly below) stipulate the collapse of the revelatory properties of the symptom and language.
1994, Nicolas Abraham, Maria Torok, Nicholas Thomas Rand, The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, →ISBN2 more examples
In contradistinction to this view, Abraham and Torok's theory of cryptonymy construes the bar or sign of repression as an object of investigation that gives itself to be read.
2014, Esther Rashkin, Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative, →ISBN, page 37The cryptonymy of the appropriated text can also operate at the level of vernacular expression, or depersonalized forms of public language—such as advertising copy—whereby the common phrases or idioms sampled in a poem may disclose submerged conditions of social antagonism or distress.
2014, Daniel Tiffany, My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch, →ISBN, page 201
Origin
Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with cryptonymy
Cite this entry
cryptonymy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cryptonymy
“cryptonymy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cryptonymy. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cryptonymy,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cryptonymy.
Source: cryptonymy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.