Synecdoche
Synecdoche is a specific type of metaphor in which a part of an object or person is used for the whole, or conversely the whole for the part. For example, in “Who's got the wheels to get us to the movie?”, “wheels” refers to a car. Conversely, in “I'm going to get the car tuned up,” “car” refers to the engine. This is different from metonymy, which substitutes a related attribute rather than a part of a thing or person. In “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” “head” is a synecdoche and crown is a metonymy.
Notes on Synecdoche
Appearance and Deception
Read the NoteA recurring theme in many of Shakespeare’s plays, and central to Much Ado About Nothing, explores how easily people are deceived not just by the false testimony of others but even by their own senses. Claudio, believing he was deceived by Don John, learned to place no trust in the words of others. With “Let every eye negotiate for itself,”
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Quotes including the Figure of Speech Synecdoche
How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st
Read the SonnetHow oft, when thou, my music, music play’stAnastrophe, Antanaclasis, Epizeuxis & Metaphor
Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,Anastrophe & Synecdoche
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Read the SonnetLet me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.Synecdoche Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.Polyptoton
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
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Two households, both alike in dignity
Read the SonnetTwo households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudgeParenthesis break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.Antanaclesis & Synecdoche
From forth the fatal loins of these two foesAlliteration, Oxymoron & Synecdoche
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
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I come no more to make you laugh
Read the QuoteI come no more to make you laugh. Things now
PersonificationThat bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,
SynecdocheSuch noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present.Hyperbaton Those that can pity here
May,
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I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Aragon comes this night to Messina
Read the QuoteLeonato, with a letter
I learn in this letter that Don
Pedro of Aragon comes this night to Messina.
Messenger
He is very near by this. He was not three
leagues off when I left him.
He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age,
doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion.
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In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband
Read the QuoteCountess
In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.
Bertram
And I in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s
death anew; but I must attend his Majesty’s
command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore
in subjection.
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
excessive grief the enemy to the living
Lafew
You shall find of the King a husband,
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You do not meet a man but frowns
Read the QuoteFirst Gentleman
You do not meet a man but frowns. Our bloods
No more obey the heavens than our courtiers’
Still seem as does the King’s.Ellipsis
Second Gentleman
But what’s the matter?
Howsoe’er ’tis strange,
Or that the negligence may well be laughed at,
Yet is it true,
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What, has this thing appeared again tonight?
Read the QuoteHoratio
What, has this thing appeared again tonight?
Barnardo
I have seen nothing.
Marcellus
Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
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Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life
Read the QuoteDuke
Angelo,
There is a kind of character in thy life,
That to th’ observer doth thy history
AlliterationFully unfoldHyperbaton. Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so properAnastrophe as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
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This butcher’s cur is venomed-mouthed
Read the QuoteBuckingham
This butcher’s cur is venomed-mouthed, and I
Have not the power to muzzle him; therefore best
Not wake him in his slumber. A beggar’s book
Outworths a noble’s blood.Metaphors
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
That it do singe yourself.
Norfolk
What,
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