*** Welcome to piglix ***

Metonym


Metonymy (/mˈtɒnmi/ mi-TONN-ə-mee) is a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by a metonym, the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept. The words metonymy and metonym come from the Greek: μετωνῠμία, metōnymía, "a change of name", from μετά, metá, "after, beyond" and -ωνυμία, -ōnymía, a suffix used to name figures of speech, from ὄνῠμα, ónyma or ὄνομα, ónoma, "name".

The location of a capital is often used as a metonym for a government or other official institutions, for example: Brussels for the institutions of the European Union, Nairobi for the government of Kenya, Washington for the federal government of the United States or Beacon Hill for the government of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. A place can represent an entire industry: for instance Wall Street is often used metonymically to describe the entire U.S. financial and corporate banking sector. Common nouns and phrases can also be metonyms: red tape can stand for bureaucracy, whether or not that bureaucracy actually uses red tape to bind documents. In Commonwealth realms, The Crown is a metonym which represents the state in all its aspects.


...
Wikipedia

...