I wrote about my confusion over metonymy and synecdoche years ago—way back in 2012, in fact. But just yesterday, I stumbled upon Dictionary.com's way of navigating between the two concepts, and upon reading the blurb, I thought it made a lot of sense, so I'm reprinting it here for the edification of my readers.
metonymy versus synecdoche: What's the difference?
Metonymy is a figure of speech where the name for one object or concept is substituted for another, related one (as in the White House for the US Government). Synecdoche is a type of metonymy where the name of a whole thing substitutes the name of part of a thing or vice versa, as in head count, where the heads stand for whole people.
So according to this way of looking at the problem, synecdoche is a type of metonymy. That makes a lot more sense. In looking back at the 2012 post, I see that Dictionary.com's other writings were, at least partially, a source of confusion, not clarity. Ha!
Well, the above does clear things up a bit by providing me with a Venn-diagram mental image. Synecdoche is a type of metonymy.
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