Catachresis (from Greek , "abuse"), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error—e.g., using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc.—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.

Variant definitions

There are various characterizations of catachresis found in the literature.

Examples

Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis. Example from

Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...

's ''

Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry "Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry" is a short essay by Alexander Pope published in 1728. The aim of the essay is to ridicule contemporary poets. Content "Peri Bathous" is a blow Pope struck in an ongoing struggle against the "dunc ...

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Masters of this atachresiswill say, :Mow the beard, :Shave the grass, :Pin the plank, :Nail my sleeve.

Use in literature

Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation. It is prominent in

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including th ...

literature and, more recently, in

dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

ist and surrealist literature.

Use in philosophy and criticism

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed th ...

'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. Postcolonial theorist

Gayatri Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative L ...

applies this word to "master words" that claim to represent a group, ''e.g.'', women or the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...

, when there are no "true" examples of "woman" or "proletarian". In a similar way, words that are imposed upon people and are deemed improper thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary connection to its meaning. In

Calvin Warren Calvin may refer to: Names * Calvin (given name) ** Particularly Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States * Calvin (surname) ** Particularly John Calvin, theologian Places In the United States * Calvin, Arkansas, a hamlet * Calvin ...

's ''Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation'', catachresis refers to the ways Warren conceptualizes the figure of the black body as vessel or vehicle in which fantasy can be projected. Drawing primarily from the "Look a Negro" moment in

Frantz Fanon Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have be ...

's ''

Black Skin, White Masks ''Black Skin, White Masks'' (french: Peau noire, masques blancs) is a 1952 book by philosopher Frantz Fanon. The book is written in the style of autoethnography, in which Fanon shares his own experiences while presenting a historical critique of ...

'', Chapter 5: "The Fact of Blackness",Frantz Fanon, "The Fact of Blackness," in: his ''Black Skin, White Masks'', c. 5. Warren works from the notion that "the black body…provides form for a nothing that metaphysics works tirelessly to obliterate", in which "the black body as a vase provides form for the formlessness of nothingness. Catachresis creates a fantastical place for representation to situate the unrepresentable (i.e. blackness as nothingness).

Reading

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References

{{Reflist Rhetoric Figures of speech