Metonymic

The British government is often referred to by the metonymic expression "Downing Street".

With a metonymic expression encountered in almost every sixth utterance, an uncontroversial need for dealing with this problem is demonstrated.

We investigate this replacement for a proper aggregation hierarchy and argue that it comes from a misunderstanding of both the linguistic use of terminology at the point of clinical care and the logic arguments developed for its justification. In particular in SCT [SNOMED CT] the holonymic (or hypernym) role of an aggregating concept is used as a source of inheritance which is clearly incorrect. Our explanation for this SCT modelling strategy is that the role of such a holonym has undergone the process of metonymic substitution, which is substitution of the authentic word for one that serves as a metaphor for the original. The assignment of attributes and relations of the meronymic (sub-part) members of the holonym (super-part) to be one of the holonym itself can at best be called metonymic inheritance. Importantly, if it is allowed to operate at all, it must operate from the bottom up, that is the attributes move from the part to the whole, that is, in reverse to what we normally think of as the direction of inheritance, from the top down.

In almost all cases, metonymic phrases focus on two questions: when and where? […] All of which is why, 13 years later, the phrase “9/11” is the only newly created phrase to remain in use since the attack. (Adios “Ground Zero” and “weapons of mass destruction.”) Linguistically, it’s a metonymic beast that shows no sign of discontinuation.