Metalepsis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metalepsis (from Greek Μετάληψις) is a figure of speech in which one thing is referenced by something else which is only remotely associated with it. Often the association works through a different figure of speech, or through a chain of cause and effect. Often metalepsis refers to the combination of several figures of speech into an altogether new one.
[edit] Examples
- "I've got to go catch the worm tomorrow morning."
- "The early bird catches the worm" is a common maxim in English, advocating getting an early start on the day to achieve success. The subject, by referencing this maxim, is compared to the bird; tomorrow, the speaker will awaken early in order to achieve success.
- "He's a lead foot."
- Lead is heavy; a lead foot would be heavy; the weight of a lead foot would push down on the automobile accelerator; hence, he drives quickly. The meaning comes from transferring heaviness from lead to feet and by understanding that the context of the comment is how "he" drives.
- "'Death can have a wide snout like a hyena'.... Just then the hyena stopped whimpering in the night and started to make a strange, human, almost crying sound. The woman heard it and stirred uneasily." (Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro)
- Death is like a hyena. The crying sound comes from a man experiencing death. The hyena represents death (the simile has become a metaphor), and death in turn represents the man (a metonym, since the man is dying, thus is associated with death).
- This reading remains questionable, since the word hyena may not refer to the man at all, but simply to a literal hyena. At the end of the story, a howling hyena is mentioned again, after the man has died Here it cannot be metalepsis; it could either be Death Incarnate (a simple metaphor) or a literal hyena, but not the metaleptic man.
