antonomasia
Sign in to saveIn rhetoric, antonomasia is a kind of metonymy in which an epithet or phrase takes the place of a proper name, such as "the little corporal" for Napoleon I, or conversely the use of a proper name as an archetypal name, to express a generic idea. A frequent instance of antonomasia in the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance was the use of the term "the Philosopher" to refer to Aristotle.
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Within Vinony's link graph, antonomasia is referenced by 104 other articles, and connects out to Napoleon, stylistic device and Paris.
It is catalogued under topics including Culture articles needing translation from French Wikipedia, Figures of speech and Spoken articles.
Its subject is documented across 43 Wikipedia language editions.
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Encyclopedic overview
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- Archetypal names
- Examples
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In rhetoric, antonomasia is a kind of metonymy in which an epithet or phrase takes the place of a proper name, such as "the little corporal" for Napoleon I, or conversely the use of a proper name as an archetypal name, to express a generic idea. A frequent instance of antonomasia in the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance was the use of the term "the Philosopher" to refer to Aristotle.
Stylistically, such epithets may be used for elegant variation to reduce repetition of names in phrases. The word comes from the Greek , antonomasia, itself from the verb , antonomazein 'to name differently'.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “antonomasia” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.