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Can anyone tell me the rhetorical term that would mean essentially the opposite of synecdoche? In other words, referring to a part as the whole?
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Dear Verlangen: We have a problem. A oart used for the whole is: Synecdoche n. 5LME, altered (infl. by L) < synodoche < ML sinodoche, for L synecdoche < Gr synekdochc, lit., a receiving together < synekdechesthai, to receive together < syn3, together + ekdechesthai, to receive < ek3, from + dechesthai, to receive < IE base *dea3 > DECENT6 a figure of speech in which a part is used for a whole, an individual for a class, a material for a thing, or the reverse of any of these (Ex.: bread for food, the army for a soldier, or copper for a penny) syn[ec[doch[ic 7sin#ek d9k4ik8 or syn#ec[doch$i[cal Right off hand, I cannot remember what is the opposite to synecdoche, I'll try to look it up. Here is very good URL about rhetoric. Takes a while to navigate it, but lot of good stuff in it. Many,many terms defined. But no way to go from definition back to name of the term. http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm
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I'm sorry, diarrhea of the brain and constipation of the fingers.
I had intended to describe the rhetorical device which uses a whole to name a part--the opposite of synecdoche. Please forgive the opyt.
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Dear Verlangen: So far I've struck out searching for term with meaning using whole
for a part. I'll keep trying, it's fun. Thanks for something to do. Bill
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Dear Verlangen: closed thing I can think of to what you are looking for is
"steganography" in which the secret message is a small part of the innocent whole.
I don't know any other words using the first root.
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enthusiast
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Hey, Verl: Here's something I Googled up. News to me: synecdoche covers the whole lot.  A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword). And all this time I thought it was a town in upstate NY. 
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old hand
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Synecdoche does mean both, doesn't it! I read that a while ago but only when I saw what you'd written did it flash back.
A related term 'metonymy' (Gr. change name), indicates the use of an attribute to describe someone or something. For instance, if one describes business men as 'suits'. This obviously doesn't work round the other way:-)
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but it worked in slithy's example, "here comes the law" when you see a policeman, or "now starts the deluge" when you feel a few drops of water, (or have your first drink at a party where some one else is paying!) in these cases, the whole is represented by the part...just as "100 head of cattle" doesn't just mean you have heads mounted on the wall, it mean you have 100 cattle, head to tail.
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Spot on, BY. I said much the same thing privately to Slithy--I remembered after the fact that synecdoche covers several instances, and is in fact a bit of a subclass of metonymy, which can sometimes be confused with metaphor.
In retrospect, I think what I'm seeking would be the opposite of metonymy. When we say that using a whole to describe a part is an aspect of synecdoche, I believe there's an understanding that said part only exists as part of the whole, eg: in the daily bread example, we could refer to bread as food (whole for part), or food as bread (whole for part).
What I'm seeking is the term for referring to a part by focusing on one application of it (ie one whole to which it is a part) but indiscriminately applying said name to the part no matter how it's being used. To continue the bread example, we refer to money as bread, whether or not it's actually being used to purchase bread. Is this still synecdoche? Synedoche once-removed? Metonymic synecdoche (bread representing food is synecdoche + an aspect of money is its use for buying food--metonymy)? Or at this point does it become merely metaphoric?
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