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formerly known as etaoin...
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what is the rhetorical figure of speech equivalent to eponym or alliteration or metaphor for when you have used a name for one class of objects (yes, technically a centaur is sentient but think of it in the way human or chair is a class of object) as the given name for a wholly different group of objects.Well, it's not alliteration or metaphor. Centaurus was not a centaur. He was human or divine. He mated with some mares and that's where centaurs came from, or at least that is the myth preserved for us in classical literature. Sounds like a plain old eponym. Centaurs are also called Ixcionides, i.e., the sons of Ixion. His story ( link) is complicated, but he was human or semi-divine, being the offspring of Zeus. As implied below, genericization comes close, but is a modern term. Do you have any other wexample than centaurs, which I believe is a flawed one? Many origin myths (of groups of people or other kinds of beings) merely postulate a forefather whose name is a back-formation from the group name, e.g., Geoffrey of Monmouth writes that the origin of the Britons is from a Trojan Brutus, who left Asia with Aeneas (the latter having founded Rome), and finally ended up in Britannia. Another example is Romulus who founded Rome with his twin brother Remus.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Centaurus was not a centaur. He was human or divine. He mated with some mares and that's where centaurs came from, or at least that is the myth preserved for us in classical literature. Sounds like a plain old eponym. That would explain why centaurs, the half human half horse centaurs are so called. But that's not the question. The question is about the half asteroid, half comet centaurs. They were not named after Centaurus.
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The question is about the half asteroid, half comet centaurs. They were not named after Centaurus.
Well, presumably some guy/gal named them cuz they reminded him/her of half men half horses. As I asked: do you have some other examples of this phenomenon? If not, I hardly think it needs a term that covers the coining of this particular word. Metaphor covers it pretty well, but seems broader than expected.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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..or maybe just because it's half of something and half of something else - an allusion, as it were.
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Well, maybe there isn't a word for it. I have one additional example. On my trip to work one possible route goes along a short gravel road name Stonehouse Rd. At one end of Stonehouse Rd. is a stone house. We always refer to it as the eponymous stone house, but, as allisondbl points out, that's not quite the right term. And I have referred to an inning with the same number as the number of runs one team gets in that inning as eponymous, as in, the Red Sox scored five runs in the eponymous fifth inning. I don't think this is a common usage so I wouldn't put it forth as an example. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if my stone house example was legitimate.
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maybe just because it's half of something and half of something else - an allusion, as it were
That's what I meant, tsu, but just could express well. Thanks.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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At one end of Stonehouse Rd. is a stone house.Well, I looked at the entry for eponumos in Scott & Liddell ( link), and one section says: "named after a person or thing". I realize this is just promoting the etymological fallacy, because the OED online entry only mentions a thing's being named after a person. Maybe it's just rarer than vice versa, but Faldo's example feels like a common enough thing.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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stranger
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LOLS again. To use another expression, peeps be getting lost in the trees and missing da forest.
Okay let's see if I can think up an example of what I'm looking for. There are NO repeat NO proper names involved.
Bugger. I can't think of one. Okay. Maybe this is a parallel example, MAYBE ... Lewis Caroll named a thing a Boojum, and the Boojum Tree was named such after it as is a phenomenon in physics. Assuming Boojum was a CLASS or TYPE of thing in Carroll then maybe this is another example of what I'm looking for a rhetorical name for.
(yes, too many for endings, sorry busy and don't want to rewrite.) Any help??
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Trojan asteroids might be on the edge of what we're looking for but chimera is, I believe, spot on.
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