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,Personification
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.Metaphor & Personification
To be so tickled they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,Catachresis
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.Ellipsis, Hyperbaton & Zeugma
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,Metaphor
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.Litotes
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;Epithet
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Doth with their deathAlliteration bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,Transferred Epithets
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,Parenthesis
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here Alliterationshall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.Parenthesis & Synecdoche
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 find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honor
Read the QuoteLeonato
I find here that Don
Pedro hath bestowed much honor on a young
Florentine called Claudio.
Messenger
Much deserved on his part, and equally
remembered by Don Pedro.Anapodoton 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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Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life
Read the QuoteAngelo,
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.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
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Tush, tush, ’twill not appear
Read the QuoteHoratio
Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.Alliteration & Epizeuxis
Barnardo
Sit down awhile,
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,Synecdoche & Assonance
What we have two nights seen.Anastrophe
Before my God,
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Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?
Read the QuoteLafew
—Was this gentlewoman
the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
excessive grief the enemy to the living
Countess
His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to
my overlooking.Ellipsis I have those hopes of her good
that her education promises.
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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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Your office, Sergeant: execute it
Read the QuoteBrandon
Your office, Sergeant: execute it.Hyperbaton
Sergeant, to Buckingham
Sir,
My lord the Duke of Buckingham and Earl
Of Hertford, Stafford, and Northampton, I
Arrest thee of high treason, in the name
Of our most sovereign king.
I am the shadow of poor Buckingham,
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