merism
Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- noun Referring to something by its polar extremes.
- noun Referring to something by a list of its parts.
Examples
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Answer: God created the heavens and the earth (a merism for "everything") approximately four thousand years before the birth of Christ, conducting His creative work ex nihilo over a period of six days, as described in Genesis 1.
Note
The word 'merism' comes from a Greek word meaning 'division'.