Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Sister project Template:Use dmy dates Catachresis (from Greek {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "misuse"), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error, is also the name given to many different types of figures of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Examples of the original meaning include using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc. As a rhetorical figure, catachresis may signify an unexpected or implausible metaphor.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Variant definitionsEdit

There are various characterizations of catachresis found in the literature.

Definition Example
Crossing categorical boundaries with words, because there otherwise would be no suitable word.<ref>Max Black discusses this phenomenon at some length, designating them catachrestic substitution metaphors: Black, M., Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962).</ref><ref name="Stolow2012">Pierre Fontanier, Les Figures du discours (Paris: Flammarion, 1977 [orig. 1821–1830]), p. 214.</ref> The sustainers of a chair being referred to as legs.
Replacing an expected word with another, half rhyming (or a partly sound-alike) word, with an entirely different meaning from what one would expect (cf malapropism, Spoonerism, aphasia).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation CitationClass=web

}}</ref> || I'm ravished! for "I'm ravenous!" or for "I'm famished!" "They build a horse" instead of they build a house.

The strained use of an already existing word or phrase.<ref name="Sickle2010">Template:Cite book</ref> "Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon's purse" – Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
The replacement of a word with a more ambiguous synonym (cf euphemism).<ref name="Clogan1997">Template:Cite book</ref> Saying job-seeker instead of "unemployed".

ExamplesEdit

Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis.<ref name="Arac2011">Template:Cite book</ref>

Example from Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry:

Masters of this [catachresis] will say,

Mow the beard,
Shave the grass,
Pin the plank,
Nail my sleeve.<ref>Pope, Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, x</ref>

Use in literatureEdit

Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation. It is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in dadaist and surrealist literature.Template:Citation needed

Use in philosophy and criticismEdit

In Jacques Derrida's ideas of deconstruction, catachresis refers to the original incompleteness that is a part of all systems of meaning. He proposes that metaphor and catachresis are tropes that ground philosophical discourse.<ref>Clarification needed: the tradition of Sausserian linguistics in which Derrida works holds that the relation between all signifiers and their signifieds is an arbitrary one.</ref>Template:Citation needed

Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak applies this word to "master words" that claim to represent a group, e.g., women or the proletariat, when there are no "true" examples of "woman" or "proletarian". In a similar way, words that are imposed upon people and are deemed improperTemplate:By whom thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitraryTemplate:Clarification needed connection to its meaning.Template:Citation needed

See alsoEdit

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