Catachresis

Not to be confused with catechesis.

Catachresis (from Greek κατάχρησις, "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.^[1] 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.^[2]

Variant definitions

There are various characterizations of catachresis found in literature.

Definition	Example
Crossing categorical boundaries with words, because there otherwise would be no suitable word.[3][4]	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).[5]	"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.[6]	"Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon's purse." – Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
The replacement of a word with a more ambiguous synonym (cf. euphemism).[7]	Saying job-seeker instead of unemployed.

Examples

Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis.^[8]

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.^[9]

Use in literature

Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation. It is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in dadaist and surrealist literature.^{[citation needed]}

Use in philosophy and criticism

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.^{[clarification needed][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 improper^{[by whom?]} thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary^{[clarification needed]} connection to its meaning.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Cacography – Deliberate misspelling for comic effect
• Doublespeak – Language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words
• Peter Piper Principle – The tendency to confuse two words that start with the same letter
• Skunked term – Word avoided due to problematic meanings

Reading

• Ghiazza, Silvana (2007). Le figure retoriche. Bologna: Zanichelli. p. 350. ISBN 978-88-08-16742-2.
• Morton, Stephen (2003). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London: Routledge. pp. 176. ISBN 0-415-22934-0.
• Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 677. ISBN 0-674-36250-0. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)