Catachresis (from Greek , "misuse"), originally meaning a

semantic Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

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. 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.

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 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early ...

's '' Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry'':

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 Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

literature and, more recently, in

dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

ist and

surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

literature.

Use in philosophy and criticism

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

's ideas of

deconstruction In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from ...

, 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: the tradition of Sausserian linguistics in which Derrida works holds that the relation between ''all'' signifiers and their signifieds is an arbitrary one.

Postcolonial Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory) is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and extractivism, exploitation of colonized pe ...

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 thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary connection to its meaning.

Reading

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References

{{Figures of speech Rhetoric Figures of speech