A few weeks ago, we talked about contronyms. Contronyms are words that mean two opposite things, for example, sanction, which can mean to allow or to boycott. We all know about antonyms (opposites), synonyms (same meaning), and homonyms (sound the same), but there are many other words that end in -nym. We will talk about a few of them today.
Metonym –A word, phrase, place, or expression used as a substitute for something. For example, when we say Washington, we often mean the United States government:
- There is a lot going on in Washington these days.
- I quit that job because there was too much going on around the water cooler. (Water cooler implies some place where there is gossip.)
- That looks like a Beverly Hills house to me. (fancy house such as you would see in Beverly Hills).
- Is the Pentagon planning something? (refers generally to the Department of Defense).
Metonyms do resemble metaphors. Metaphors are more based on similarity; metonyms are based on association.
Toponym – A toponym is simply the name of a place: Boston, Foggy River. However, there are different types of toponyms. Here are some of them.
- Descriptive – The Rocky Mountains, Grass Valley
- Associative – Mall Road (there is a mall on the street)
- Incident – Battle River
- Commemorative – St. Louis
- Manufactured – Ytic (city spelled backwards)
- Mistaken – West Indies (historic errors)
- Shifted – Athens, Texas ; New England; Rome, New York (names taken from elsewhere)
Eponym – An eponym is a person (real or fictional) for which something or someplace is named. Here are some examples.
- Walt Disney – Disneyland
- Achilles – Achilles heel
- Adonis – a handsome male
- Jonas Salk – Salk vaccine
- Charles Boycott – boycott
- Robert Bunsen – Bunsen burner
- Christian Doppler – the Doppler effect
- J. William Fulbright – Fulbright scholarship
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Jekyll and Hyde personality (or split personality
Those last ones are fun and there are “zillions” of them!
Note: Someone recently told me that they comment on my posts frequently, but they never receive a reply. I am led to believe that you don’t get any kind of e-mail notification that I have responded. However, I want to let you know that I respond to every single comment I get; I guess you have to return to the blog posts to see the replies. Perhaps there is some type of setting, but I don’t know what it is. I will look into it.
Next Week – Back to confusing words….
If you want to know everything about these -nyms: hypernyms, hyponyms, holonyms, meronyms and pertainyms, have a look at WordNet a large database of words showing their lexical and semantic relations: https://wordnet.princeton.edu, or consult Wikipedia first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordNet
Or you can just keep reading my blog posts 🙂
I definitely will (Will always will!), but I am so happy with unleashing the power of Python and its Natural Language ToolKit module on discovering the myriad gems in WordNet’s treasure-trove.
Sorry, must be getting poetic in my old age …
I will have to check on that….
The verb “table” has opposite meanings in the US vs. other parts of the English-speaking world. As an American who now lives in Canada, I’ve been confused by this. Here’s what Wikipedia says: “In parliamentary procedure, the verb to table has the opposite meaning in different countries: In the United States, to “table” usually means to postpone or suspend consideration of a pending motion. In the rest of the English-speaking world, to “table” means to begin consideration (or reconsideration) of a proposal.”
Susan – Interesting. Thanks for the information!
” . . . you don’t get any kind of e-mail notification that I have responded. However, I want to let you know that I respond to every single comment I get; I guess you have to return to the blog posts to see the replies.”
The above is correct. It would be appreciated to get an email notification–or something–indicating you’ve replied.
It is beyond me technically; I will ask my web guy!
I love your posts, though! What especially drives up the wall is improper use of “few/fewer” and “less”, especially when referring to people!
Another gripe of mine: using subjective case when it should be objective, such as “H e gave Carole and I..”
My theory is that somehow, somewhere, people got the impression that subjective pronouns are “classier” than their objective counterparts.
Thanks — and I agree with everything you say!
What is the difference between a metonym and a synocdoche?
Notifying people of their responses is probably enabled using a plug-in to the blogging app.
This is what Google and Webster say: The terms metonymy and synecdoche refer to two similar figures of speech used as rhetorical devices. … ‘Synecdoche’ is when a part of something is used to refer to the whole. ‘Metonymy’ is when something is used to represent something related to it.
Good to revisit these.
I had never heard of any of them!