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What is the difference between metonymy and synecdoche?
In metonymy, a word that is associated with something is used to refer to that thing, as when crown is used to mean "king" or "queen," or when Mark Antony asks the people of Rome to lend him their ears in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. It's also metonymy when an author's name is used to refer to works written by that person, as in "We are studying Jane Austen." Synecdoche is when the word for a part of something is substituted for the whole thing (such as hired hand for "worker"), or less commonly, when the whole is used to represent a part (as when society denotes "high society"). For more on this pair read the full article.
Examples of metonymy in a Sentence
Anna Shechtman, The New Yorker, 20 Dec. 2021
But rather than presenting their fate as an ending, Simpson goes beyond rhetorical strategies of synecdoche and metonymy to represent the whole encased in ice.
—Star Tribune, 12 Feb. 2021
Though Vietnam would be Simulmatics’ most profitable venture, its work there produced virtually nothing—a metonymy, perhaps, for the entirety of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
—J.c. Pan, The New Republic, 8 Sep. 2020
Another is described only as bucktoothed, a flat, one-dimensional metonymy.
—Yvette Benavides, ExpressNews.com, 4 June 2020
The general connection, then, is that in both watchmaking and gunmaking the term has a history of being used to denote diameter and in both cases, to some extent, has come to refer to a thing whose diameter was specified (maybe by metonymy).
—Jack Forster, Bloomberg.com, 8 May 2017
Beyond the day’s stories, however, artists have often used (print) newspapers as metonymies for the flow and acceleration of information.
—Jason Farago, New York Times, 5 Jan. 2017
Cite this Entry
“Metonymy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metonymy. Accessed 16 Jun. 2026.
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