Catachresis

 ( Rhetoric ) 

Catachresis (from Greek language κατάχρησις, "misuse"), originally meaning a Semantics misuse or error, is also the name given to many different types of figures of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage.

Examples of the original meaning include using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc. As a rhetorical figure, catachresis may signify an unexpected or implausible metaphor.

Richard A. Lanham (1991). 9780520076693, University of California Press. ISBN 9780520076693

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Variant definitions There are various characterizations of catachresis found in the literature.

The sustainers of a chair being referred to as legs.
I'm ravished! for "I'm ravenous!" or for "I'm famished!" "They build a horse" instead of they build a house.
The strained use of an already existing word or phrase. John Van Sickle (2010). 9780801899614, JHU Press. . ISBN 9780801899614	"Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon's purse" – Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
The replacement of a word with a more ambiguous synonym (cf euphemism). Paul Maurice Clogan (1997). 9780847686742, Rowman & Littlefield. . ISBN 9780847686742	Saying job-seeker instead of "unemployed".

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Examples Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis.

Jonathan Arac (2025). 9780823231782, Fordham Univ Press. . ISBN 9780823231782

Example from Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry:

Masters of this catachresis will say,

Mow the beard,

Shave the grass,

Pin the plank,

Nail my sleeve.Pope, Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry, x

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Use in literature Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation. It is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in and surrealism literature.

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Use in philosophy and criticism In Jacques Derrida's ideas of deconstruction, catachresis refers to the original incompleteness that is a part of all systems of meaning. He proposes that metaphor and catachresis are tropes that ground philosophical discourse.Clarification needed: the tradition of Sausserian linguistics in which Derrida works holds that the relation between all signifiers and their signifieds is an arbitrary one.

Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak applies this word to "master words" that claim to represent a group, e.g., women or the proletariat, when there are no "true" examples of "woman" or "proletarian". In a similar way, words that are imposed upon people and are deemed improper thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary connection to its meaning.

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See also

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Reading

• Silvana Ghiazza (2025). 9788808167422, Zanichelli. ISBN 9788808167422
• Stephen Morton (2025). 9780415229340, Routledge. . ISBN 9780415229340
• Herbert Weir Smyth (2025). 9780674362505, Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674362505

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