Metonymy is a literary device that replaces a noun with a figure of speech, often known within a culture. It is used in rhetoric, literature, and news. Polysemy, synecdoche, and kennings are related phenomena. Fiction and non-fiction use metonymy to represent national governments and industries. Examples of metonymy in literature include Shakespeare’s use of “steel” for sword and Bulwer-Lytton’s phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword.”
The function of metonymy in literature is to replace a noun with a figure of speech. This means replacing one word with another. The replacement word is generally known within the culture, but may not be immediately obvious to second language speakers. Metonymy is used in rhetoric, literature and news. An example of a metonym is the use of “Westminster” to refer to the British government.
Metonymy is closely related to other phenomena. This includes polysemy, kennings and synecdoche. Polysemy occurs when a word or phrase can have more than one meaning. Synecdoche occurs when a word meaning a part of something is used to mean the whole. An example of a synecdoche is the use of keel to mean a whole boat or wheels to mean a car.
Kennings are an ancient Anglo-Nordic literary device often found in old poetry. A kenning performs a function similar to a metonym in the literature. Instead of replacing word for word, kenning replaces a noun with two words. Like metonymy, kenning is a circumlocution, using words as tools. Examples of kennings include the use of “whale road” to mean “sea” and “wave steed” to mean “ship”.
Both fiction and non-fiction make use of metonymy in literature. Non-fiction includes rhetoric, articles and letters. They are a common occurrence in finance where “Wall Street” is used to describe America’s financial center. “Fleet Street” is used to refer to Britain’s center for journalism, even though most of the newspaper companies have relocated elsewhere. It is very commonly used for political reporting where the “White House” means the President and “the Capitol” means both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Non-fiction also uses metonymy in literature to represent national governments and associate particular industries with particular places. Instead of referring to the Australian government, a newspaper might refer to “Canberra” and the various committees and parliaments of the European Union are simply called “Brussels”. Similarly, the American auto industry is known as “Detroit” and its innovative computer industry as “Silicon Valley”.
Metonymy can be found throughout fiction in poetry, plays, and novels. William Shakespeare made use of metonymy in many plays, such as when in “Macbeth” a character “wielded steel”. Steel is obviously used to mean a sword. In “Beowulf,” a character used “iron” to mean a sword. Other metonyms for sword include blade and edge.
Purple prose specialist Edward Bulwer-Lytton created a famous metonym in literature with the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword.” This is a double metonym with pen meaning words and sword meaning violence. In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, the homonymous character asks his “friends, Romans, compatriots” to “lend an ear to me”. Ears mean attention. Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein’s Monster” itself has become a metonym in which the term “Frankenstein” is used to denote a man-made monstrosity.
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