Rhetoric & FiguresIntermediate
Synecdoche
A figure in which part stands for whole, or whole for part.
Principle
Scale can concentrate meaning.
Takeaways
- It is often treated as a subtype of metonymy.
- The chosen part should reveal the whole's pressure.
- It can humanise abstraction or reduce people to function.
Overview
Synecdoche uses a part-whole relation to carry meaning. It can make an army into hands, a ship into sails, or a nation into a crowd of faces.
Examples
- All hands on deck.
- A city of hungry mouths waited outside the bakery.