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Mit #189069 02/02/10 11:52 AM
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If the term is used as in "that Hobbit's feet are covered in curly hair similar to that on their head is canon" then I would say it is definition 5 with the added fillip of that rhetorical device, whose name I do not remember, where a thing is referred to by the name of the thing of which it is a part, as in "Washington announced today that ..." where Washington refers to a spokesman for some branch of the federal government. On the other hand, it could just be a shortening of the adjective canonical, in which case it would still be from definition 5 extended to include things other than the body of written works of a brick and mortar author.

Faldage #189070 02/02/10 01:04 PM
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Metonymy or pars pro toto?


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
zmjezhd #189089 02/03/10 11:53 AM
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Metonymy was the first thing to spring to my mind but it seems that's more the other way around. I couldn't find a term for totus pro parte in the Forest.

Faldage #189092 02/03/10 03:20 PM
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synecdoche
[L. a. Gk synekdoche] /suh NEK duh kee/ (rhymes with Schenectady* : )
a figure by which a more comprehensive term is used for a less comprehensive or vice versa; as whole for part or part for whole, genus for species or species for genus, etc. (compare metonymy) [wwftd]

*see the movie, Synecdoche, New York (2008)

edit: bemused by the definitions? this probly won't help..
wikilink

Last edited by tsuwm; 02/03/10 03:28 PM.
tsuwm #189096 02/04/10 11:58 AM
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I looked up synecdoche and thought there was something wrong with it. Turns out it was just my old trick of not reading all the way through. Synecdoche works both ways. Surely there must be a word that only means 'the whole for a part'.

Faldage #189097 02/04/10 12:00 PM
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Ceci n'est pas un seing.
zmjezhd #189098 02/04/10 02:11 PM
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Pars pro totum is one thing. "the crew consisted of 200 heads" makes a sound example.
The examples for totum pro parte are really a little weak in this article, it seems to me. Nobody says: "I go for two weeks to the Republic of Ireland". Just: "I go for two weeks to Ireland". " The Republic of Ireland", can that be seen as a whole and Ireland as a part? I don't get it.

BranShea #189105 02/05/10 01:06 AM
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Originally Posted By: BranShea
" The Republic of Ireland", can that be seen as a whole and Ireland as a part? I don't get it.


It's the other way around. They're giving examples of a larger geographical unit being used for a subset of that larger unit. Ireland includes Northern Ireland, a part of the UK, on the one hand and The Republic of Ireland on the other.

Faldage #189450 02/22/10 08:41 PM
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Synecdoche works both ways: "all hands on board" and "Detroit beat Dallas last week" are both examples of synecdoche. There may be a rhetorical device that addresses just one or the other, but I'm not aware of such a thing. Of course, there may be phrases that express the idea of one or the other, but I don't believe these phrases are "official" rhetorical devices.

Earlier, someone wrote that Hindi must have borrowed the word (=canon) from English. More likely, they are both descended from the same proto-Indoeuropean language, as was William Conrad.


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beck123 #189453 02/22/10 09:19 PM
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someone wrote that Hindi must have borrowed the word (=canon) from English. More likely, they are both descended from the same proto-Indoeuropean language, as was William Conrad.

Not likely, words that begin with a c in Latin (canna 'tube') or a k in Greek (kanōn 'rule') do not correspond to words in Indic (Hindi and Sanskrit) beginning in k; cf. for instance Latin centum with Sanskrit śatem '100'. The name Conrad is Germanic, and there an initial k does not correspond with initial Latin c; cf. canis 'dog' and hound.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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