Using Synecdoche

Using Synecdoche in Life and Poetry.

Synecdoche refers to the practice of using a part of something to stand in for the whole thing.

Synecdoche examples in Idioms and Everyday Language.

Synecdoche is used in many common idioms, and it has become ingrained in the way we use language in our day-to-day lives. The meaning of some of the following examples may seem so obvious or literal that you may be surprised to discover that each one is, in fact, a synecdoche:

• “Nice wheels!” A synecdoche in which “wheels” stand in for the car that they are a part of.
• “Have you got the Bread” meaning money.
Or bread is used to refer to food in general.
• “What’s the head count?” The person asking this question is interested not just in the number of heads, but rather in the number of people to whom the heads belong.
• “I will use plastic” refers to a credit card.
• Many people use brand names to refer to generic-brand products; this is a type of synecdoche because the brand-name product is just one subset of a broader category.

So if you call all facial tissues “Kleenex,” call all adhesive bandages “plasters,” or drink “soda” whenever you’re having a soft drink, you’re using a synecdoche.

Examples of Synecdoche in Poetry

In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”  Samuel Coleridge uses synecdoche in the lines:
The western wave was all a-flame.
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun.
Here, “wave” stands in for the whole ocean (or at least the part of the ocean—larger than a wave—that is relevant to the text). So when the Ancient Mariner says “the western wave,” he is referring to the ocean to the west, extending to the western horizon.In Ozymandius by Percy Bysshe Shelley”The hand that mocked them.” is a line in which synecdoche is used by using the word hand to refer to the sculptor.In T S Eliotts ‘The lovesong of Alfred Prucock’ we can see an example of synecdoche when he refers to people as their body parts. ‘Prepare your face to meet faces you will meet and have time for the works of hands.’In “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died” by Emily Dickinson
In the second stanza of the poem, Emily Dickinson writes:
The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
Be witnessed—in the Room—
Here, “eyes” stand in for people. Dickinson’s use of synecdoche emphasizes that the people in the room are watching the speaker, but it also serves a more technical purpose. In “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died” each stanza is four lines long. The first and third lines of each stanza are eight syllables long, and the second and fourth lines are six syllables long (a metrical pattern known as common meter). By using synecdoche, Dickinson is able to maintain the rhythm of the poem while communicating, in just a few words, that the people surrounding the speaker are watching her and have been weeping.
Why poets use synecdoche
The work of poets like Dickinson and Coleridge show how poets use synecdoche to exchange one word or phrase for another, making it a useful device for preserving rhythm and rhyme within poetic verse. Similarly, a poet could use synecdoche to enhance the sound of poetry. Perhaps most important, synecdoche allows poets to pack a lot of meaning into just a word or two. In “I heard a fly buzz—when I died,” Emily Dickson’s decision to use “eyes” to represent people draws our attention to the things that their eyes are doing: weeping and watching. We can infer that these people feel powerless because, as the speaker dies, all they can do is weep and watch. The people themselves, feel, in a way, like they are nothing more than eyes. By using synecdoche, Dickinson doesn’t need to tell us these details outright, which allows her to maintain the poem’s sparse, fragmented style.
In any context, synecdoche is a way to layer multiple meanings onto a single word or phrase. Synecdoche helps poets make their work more complex, nuanced, and meaningful.