Catachresis

Catachresis (from Greek κατάχρησις, "abuse") is "misapplication of a word, especially in a mixed metaphor" according to the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Another meaning is to use an existing word to denote something that has no name in the current language.

Compare malapropism and solecism, which are unintentional violations of the norms, while catachresis may be either deliberate or unintentional.

Forms and examples

Common forms of catachresis are:

• Using a word in a sense radically different from its normal sense.

"'Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon's purse" — Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

• Using a word to denote something for which, without the catachresis, there is no actual name.

"a table's leg"

• Using a word out of context.

"Can't you hear that? Are you blind?"

• Using paradoxes or contradictions.

"Darkness visible" – John Milton, Paradise Lost

• Creating an illogical mixed metaphor.

"To take arms against a sea of troubles..." – Shakespeare, Hamlet

• Misuse of a word out of a misunderstanding of its meaning.

"The runner literally flew down the track."

Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation. It is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in dadaist and surrealist literature.

Example from Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry:

Masters of this [Catachresis] will say,

Mow the beard,

Shave the grass,

Pin the plank,

Nail my sleeve.

From whence results the same kind of pleasure to the mind, as doth to the eye when we behold Harlequin trimming himself with a hatchet, hewing down a tree with a razor, making his tea in a cauldron, and brewing his ale in a teapot, to the incredible satisfaction of the British spectator.

Derrida, Spivak

In Jacques Derrida's ideas of deconstruction, catachresis refers to the original incompleteness that is a part of all systems of meaning. Postcolonial 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 a people and are deemed improper thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary connection to its meaning.

See also

• Figure of speech
• Rhetoric
• Cacography

References

• Ghiazza, Silvana (2007). Le figure retoriche. Bologna: Zanichelli. pp. 350. ISBN 978-88-08-16742-2. 
• Morton, Stephen (2003). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London: Routledge. pp. 176. ISBN 0-415-22934-0. 
• Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 677. ISBN 0-674-36250-0.