Catachresis
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Distinguish". Template:Sister project Template:Use dmy datesCatachresis (from Greek Script error: No such module "Lang"., '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.[1] 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.[2]
Variant definitions
There are various characterizations of catachresis found in literature.
| Definition | Example |
|---|---|
| Crossing categorical boundaries with words, because there otherwise would be no suitable word.[3][4] | The sustainers of a chair being referred to as legs. |
| Replacing an expected word with another, half rhyming (or a partly sound-alike) word, with an entirely different meaning from what one would expect (cf. malapropism, Spoonerism, aphasia).[5] | "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.[6] | "Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon's purse." – Shakespeare, Timon of Athens |
| The replacement of a word with a more ambiguous synonym (cf. euphemism).[7] | Saying job-seeker instead of unemployed. |
Examples
Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis.[8]
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.[9]
Use 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.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
Use in philosophy and criticism
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.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
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 improperScript error: No such module "Unsubst". thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitraryTemplate:Clarification needed connection to its meaning.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
See also
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- Peter Piper Principle – The tendency to confuse two words that start with the same letter
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Reading
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References
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- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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- ↑ Max Black discusses this phenomenon at some length, designating them catachrestic substitution metaphors: Black, M., Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962).
- ↑ Pierre Fontanier, Les Figures du discours (Paris: Flammarion, 1977 [orig. 1821–1830]), p. 214.
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- ↑ Pope, Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, x
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