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I think the introduction has too much jargon and should be narrower and more direct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by OhDoTell ( talk • contribs) 00:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
I saw this example in the article...
On the other hand, asking for "All hands on deck" is a synecdoche because hands (A) are actually a part of the men (B) to whom they refer.
Dictionary.com defines "hand" as, among other things, "[o]ne who is part of a group or crew" [1]. Since the example above is not referring to the crew's hands, but rather to the crewmen themselves, is that really an example of synechdoche (or, for that matter, metonymy) at all? I suppose calling it synechdoche would be valid if that is how that usage of "hand" came about, but in that case the etymology should be noted. Thoughts? -- bdesham ★ 20:36, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
The example, "to fish pearls" seems like a metaphor to me: am I mistaken that, "finishing for pearls" would have the exact same meaning? (And be employing the same linguistic devices.) Would the argument slightly farther down that it, "transfers the concept of fishing ... into a new domain" (namely hunting pearls instead of hunting fish). The charictarization of the activity of fishing as it is metaphorically being applied seems ill-written but perhaps not stricly incorrect.
Paxfeline 03:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Right! It's especially clear that there's a problem in this passage: "we know you do not use a fishing rod or net to get pearls and we know that pearls are not, and do not originate from, fish." In fact, since oysters are shellfish, we know that pearls do, indeed, originate from fish. JM —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.239.1.231 ( talk) 09:35, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Definitely not a metonym... Pearls refers to pearls, not the oyster. Harvesting oysters to eat is different than harvesting pearls. This was confusing from the beginning because "to fish pearls" or whatever isn't an actual idiom or metaphor, no one says or writes that. "Pearls diving" is apparently slang for cunnilingus.... which is also not a metonym BTW, all the examples discussed at length the Talk Page appear to be gone, replaced with jibberish and irrelevant references to antiquity... What the hell happened to this article? I'm obviously an anonymous so I have to criticize but it'd pretty messed up — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:647:5A00:C160:C055:BB68:D28C:1460 ( talk) 10:51, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
What about dates, like "The Fourth of July" meaning "American Independence Day" or "May Fourth" meaning "The ideas in China about nationalism and modernization that resulted in and were a result of the 'May Fourth Incident'"? Another good one is "a September 11th" meaning "An incident of terrorism on a grand scale like what happened on 11 September 2011" 198.207.26.2 ( talk) 20:31, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
So the term Arab Street instantiates what--metaphorical toponymy? That's too many levels of abstraction to be wieldy (nevermind catchy).
Patronanejo ( talk) 07:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
I am loathe to remove the items from the "bibliography", but many of them have no footnotes or parenthetical citations to show what they are supposed to support. Please help clean up the citation style if you can. Otherwise, I will probably move the books to the further reading section, and mark various assertions in the article as needing citation for verification. Thanks, Cnilep ( talk) 02:22, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
The nucleus of the first syllable in metonymy is the DRESS vowel; [ɛ]. Not [i]. 192.76.7.216 ( talk) 18:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Hello! When I learned about enthymemes, something clicked for me in figuring out the definition of metonymy I added the section relating metonymy to enthymemes in order to clarify this concept using the much more easily understood concept of syllogism for my fellow scholars who might have trouble making connections between the definition of metonymy and its use, much like I did. I'm a communication major working at a research university in a class on rhetoric and would appreciate any constructive comments or suggestions. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KBB24 ( talk • contribs) 04:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
I know I'm being a bit picky here - the idea is clear enough. But this sentence is factually incorrect:
" The national capital is often used to represent the government or monarchy of a country, such as "Washington" for United States government or "Whitehall" for the Government of the United Kingdom."
Whitehall is a street in London, not a city or capital, that's London of course. And we never (to my knowledge) use "London" to represent the UK government. And - we perhaps more commonly refer to it as Westminster after the palace of Westminster (also known as the Houses of Parliament) where the government meets.
" The national capital or another geographical location is often used to represent the government or monarchy of a country, such as the city of "Washington" for United States government or the street of "Whitehall" or the palace of "Westminster" for the Government of the United Kingdom."
is more accurate but maybe a bit clumsy. Any thoughts? Welcome to use that if others agree. I feel that this is quite a high profile page so best to suggest the idea on the talk page first rather than just jump in and try to fix it. Robert Walker ( talk) 11:35, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
I butchered the 'graph in question, complaining in a remark in the markup to the effect that
(On the other hand, that i might may have left it insufficiently clear to some, the fact that i doubt i will ever consult Burke's even-older-than-i-am monograph.)
--
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'containment' could use better examples. 'white house' & 'pentagon' function quite similarly to toponyms, I think.
you could say that a toponymic name can persist even when the signified entity moves somewhere else. But do we know that container names can't do that? Or maybe that's a primary distinguisher between these two types of metonyms? If so, the article should say so.
I think a lot of this article is just structuralists drumming up business for themselves. skak E L 11:59, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Is saying America when talking about the United States of America also an example? -- FredTC ( talk) 12:57, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
Isn't the use of the Kremlin to describe the government of Russia an example of synecdoche? Although synecdoche is a type of metonymy, given that these two are often confused [1], wouldn't it make more sense to have a different example? BobEret ( talk) 11:07, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
References
Definitions are terrible in this article, and where they do occur, the language used is so obscure and technical that it becomes meaningless. It fails to distinguish metonymy from a synecdoche, or even a metaphor, because it never mentions that a metonymy relies on an obvious and well known connection between concepts. Instead fuzzy references to 'analogous similarity' are used.
A metaphor is an unusual, creative link betwen ideas, that is specifically expressed. A metonymy relies on the fact that everyone knows a king is connected to his crown, and that the people who work in a famous building are at the address where that building is situated. That is why the metonymy of 'crown lands' or 'number 10' work without confusion. A synecdoche is a specific type of metonymy that refers to size. Again, this distinction of syndechdoches being a subset of metonymy is never mentioned.
If these definitions were set out properly then most of the above questions regarding specific examples would be solved.
I propose to add in some of these ideas to the article over the next few days - with appropriate referencing, of course. Mdw0 ( talk) 01:22, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
The Meaning Relationships section of this article feels inappropriately detailed to me. The tone and structure also feel less like an encyclopedic article and more like an educational text. There is way too much information here for it to be a reference in the style of other Wikipedia articles 217.208.166.155 ( talk) 08:03, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
No supporting evidence or even an explanation for how Israeli Hebrew somehow metaphorically rose from the ashes despite being in continuous contact use for millennia. 2600:4040:9CEE:8500:48F2:FA82:7FD3:54 ( talk) 19:45, 8 March 2023 (UTC)