Best of The Grammar Diva…

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!