Metonymy

Metonymy is a trope that transfers the name of one object to another on the basis of their real contiguity — spatial, temporal, causal or logical — rather than similarity. Examples include using the name of a vessel instead of its contents ("drank a glass"), the author instead of the work ("to read Shevchenko"), the material instead of the article, the place instead of the people in it. Unlike metaphor, which brings together distant phenomena by resemblance, metonymy rests on an objective connection of contiguous concepts. Metonymy makes an utterance terse and expressive, allowing the whole to be named through a characteristic part of its context. It is widely represented both in everyday speech and in literary prose and poetry as a means of economical imagery.