catachresis
Sign in to saveCatachresis (from Greek , 'misuse'), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error, is also the name given to many different types of figures of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage. Examples of the original meaning include using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc. As a rhetorical figure, catachresis may signify an unexpected or implausible metaphor.
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- Instance of
- stylistic device
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- different from
- category mistake
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Encyclopedic overview
7 sectionsContents
- Variant definitions
- Examples
- Use in literature
- Use in philosophy and criticism
- See also
- Reading
- References
Catachresis (from Greek , 'misuse'), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error, is also the name given to many different types of figures of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage. Examples of the original meaning include using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc. As a rhetorical figure, catachresis may signify an unexpected or implausible metaphor.
==Variant definitions==
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “catachresis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.