Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun rhetoric The use of a word of common or general signification for the name of a particular thing, as in "he has gone to town" for "he has gone to London".

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Here, by means of a clever autonomasia which went back to the sources and causes of crime, the district-attorney thundered against the immorality of the romantic school, then dawning under the name of the Satanic school, which had been bestowed upon it by the critics of the Quotidienne and the Oriflamme; he attributed, not without some probability, to the influence of this perverse literature the crime of

    Les Miserables 2008

  • Here, by means of a clever autonomasia which went back to the sources and causes of crime, the district-attorney thundered against the immorality of the romantic school, then dawning under the name of the Satanic school, which had been bestowed upon it by the critics of the Quotidienne and the

    Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1843

  • Here, by means of a clever autonomasia which went back to the sources and causes of crime, the district-attorney thundered against the immorality of the romantic school, then dawning under the name of the Satanic school, which had been bestowed upon it by the critics of the Quotidienne and the Oriflamme; he attributed, not without some probability, to the influence of this perverse literature the crime of Champmathieu, or rather, to speak more correctly, of Jean Valjean.

    Les Miserables, Volume I, Fantine 1862

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