Catachresis
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Catachresis (from Greek κατάχρησις, "abuse"), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error—e.g., using "militate" for "mitigate", "decimate" for "devastate", "chronic" for "severe", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc.—is also the name given to many different types of figure of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage.[1]
Contents
Classification
There are various different subdefinitions of catachresis.
| Definition | Example |
|---|---|
| Crossing categorical boundaries with words, because there otherwise would be no suitable word.[2][3] | The sustainers of a chair being referred to as legs. |
| Replacing an expected word with another, half rhyming word, with an entirely different meaning from what one would expect.[4] | I'm ravished! for "I'm ravenous!" or for "I'm famished!" "They build a horse" instead of they build a house. |
| The strained use of an already existing word or phrase.[5] | "Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon's purse" — Shakespeare, Timon of Athens |
| The replacement of a word with a more ambiguous synonym.[6] | Saying job-seeker instead of "unemployed". |
Examples
Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis.[7]
Classification in literature
Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation. It is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in dadaist and surrealist literature.
Example from Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry:
Masters of this [Catachresis] will say,
- Mow the beard,
- Shave the grass,
- Pin the plank,
- Nail my sleeve.[8]
Derrida, Spivak
In Jacques Derrida's ideas of deconstruction, catachresis refers to the original incompleteness that is a part of all systems of meaning. He proposes that metaphor and catachresis are tropes that ground philosophical discourse. Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak applies this word to "master words" that claim to represent a group, e.g., women or the proletariat, when there are no "true" examples of "woman" or "proletarian". In a similar way, words that are imposed upon people and are deemed improper thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary connection to its meaning.
See also
Notes
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Max Black discusses this phenomenon at some length, designating them catachrestic substitution metaphors: Black, M., Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy, Cornell University Press, (Ithaca), 1962.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Pope, Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, x
References
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
The dictionary definition of catachresis at Wiktionary
