catachresis

As you might have guessed, catachresis is a word favored by grammarians. It can sometimes be used merely as a fancy label of disparagement for uses the grammarian finds unacceptable -as when Henry Fowler insisted in 1926 that "mutual" in "our mutual friend" was a catachresis. (Fowler preferred "common," but "mutual" does have an established sense which is correct in that context.) The first recorded use of "catachresis" dates to1553, and it has been used to describe (or decry) misuses of a word ever since. "Catachresis" comes to us by way of Latin from the Greek word katachrēsis, which means "misuse."