metonym

plural metonyms

1. grammarA word that names an object from a single characteristic of it or of a closely related object; a word used in metonymy.

   Calling a government a "city hall" is using a metonym.

   3 more examples

   ...to say that "New York was thrown into a state of great excitement," when we mean the inhabitants of New York, is technically to use the metonym of putting "the container for the thing contained."

   1891 September 28, William Minto, “Practical talks on writing English”, in Theodor Flood, editor, The Chautauquan, volume 13, →OCLC, pages 279–280

   She not only outlines the devastating effects of seferberlik but also highlights the changing meaning of this term - as it acquired a civilian dimension in its Arabic rendition (safar barlik) - and its potency as a metonym for the war as a whole.

   2014 November, Melanie Schulze Tanielian, “Feeding the city: The Beirut Municipality and the politics of food during World War I”, in International Journal of Middle East Studies, volume 46, number 4, →JSTOR, pages 737–758

   As you can tell, most tragedy-associated metonyms take on the location of the event as opposed to the time, possibly because our minds like to place horrific events in the past. We want to forget troubling events, so we reserve date metonyms for things like weddings, anniversaries, or celebratory events like the Fourth of July (celebratory, at least, if you’re on the right side of history). But there is one huge exception: “9/11.” […] Using a metonym like “New York City” or “Manhattan” rings hollow as to the geography. A date doesn’t have to deal with that issue.

   2015 January 16, Rick Paulas, “The Linguistics of Tragedy”, in Pacific Standard, archived from the original on 22 Apr 2025

2. broadlyA concept, idea, or word used to represent, typify, or stand in for a broader set of ideas.

   See also: symbol, model, microcosm, archetype, exemplar, proxy

   1 more example

   Chapter 1, using the railway as a metonym, explored the relationship between past and present, and argued that diachronic, or historical, time was dissolved in the proliferation of present moments, or synchronic time.

   2011, Geraldine Lawless, Modernity's Metonyms: Figuring Time in Nineteenth-century Spanish Stories, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, →ISBN, page 155