Occupying "Wall Street" and Other Figures of Speech

“She identified herself as one of the protesters involved 

in the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement.”

“After the incident, there was a tremendous uproar in the press.”

“There was no comment from the White House.”

“A detractor said he saw the disruption 

as no more than  an excuse for drug use and drinking.”

You know what the sentences above mean, of course. You’ve been reading them in the paper every morning as you sip your latte and nibble on your croissant. But you might not realize that your understanding of them depends on your understanding the figures of speech they use—and you might not know what those figures of speech are called. Let’s take a look.

Trope

“Trope” is a word usually reserved for the study of rhetoric or literature, but not often used in everyday spoken or written English. It comes from a Greek word meaning “to alter,” or “to change,” and it means a word with an established meaning that is being used to mean something else entirely. Some examples of tropes are metaphors, similes, synecdoches, allegories, and irony. This blog has previously discussed metaphors; now let’s take on some other tropes, like the ones above.

Metonym

A “metonym” is a word that replaces the actual name of something with another term that is intimately associated with that thing, either physically or conceptually:

Wall Street

(Originally, the name of the street was expanded to mean New York’s entire financial district; now it has been further expanded, to mean the American financial industry.)

The White House

(The physical structure of the President’s residence is used to mean the President himself and his staff.)

The Press

(The name of the physical machine of the printing press is used to represent all media and agents of the media.)

Drinking

(In recognizable contexts, the word means not just drinking any liquid, but, specifically, imbibing in alcohol or drinking liquor.)

Synecdoche

(Pronounced sin-ECK-doh-key, to rhyme with Schenectady)

A “synecdoche” is a word that uses a part of something to refer to the whole. It is technically a subcategory of metonym:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!”

All hands on deck!


He had only 200 head of cattle.

Irony

“Irony” is the use of a  term used to imply the opposite of the way that term is usually understood.

“It begins—the week of thrills.” 

(An Oct. 17 Greek newspaper headline, referring to the 48-hour strike to begin Oct. 19, 2011.)

Allegory

A term used for a metaphor that is sustained through an entire sentence, argument, or discourse. In the example given, to refer only to “the winds of change” would be a metaphor, but to carry that metaphor on to particular weather conditions creates an allegory):

 The winds of change that are blowing through the world

are bringing fair weather to some nations and tsunamis to others.

______

Bulletin Board

I.C. says she sometimes sees compound words with “well” hyphenated, and sometimes does not. “Which is correct?” she asks.

Well, I.C., it depends. If the compound “well" word precedes the noun, it takes a hyphen; otherwise, it does not:

a well-done job

but

a job that is well done.


* * *

L.O. asks which spelling is correct: “apropos”  or “a propos.” 

Correctly, L.O., it is spelled as two words, “a propos” [aah-pruh-PO], since it is taken from the French “à propos.”

___


This blog has been read in Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the U.A.E., Uganda, the U.K., Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, the U.S., and Vietnam, but not in Zuccotti Park, which is actually not on Wall Street at all, but which is nevertheless being occupied by the group that calls itself “Occupy Wall Street.”