catachresis

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for catachresis
Noun
  • This is what Thadeus loves: a test of his store of poetic similes, even if, these days, his poetry-writing is notional.
    Han Ong, The New Yorker, 12 Jan. 2025
  • The simile is novel and yet the sort of thing a young woman would think; there is assonance and consonance seesawing across the sentence, which is slow and gorgeous rather than quick and thrilling.
    Joanna Biggs, Harper's Magazine, 2 Feb. 2024
Noun
  • When Russia targets other European neighbors, though, the West resorts to its own euphemisms to avoid directly acknowledging what Putin is doing.
    Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Atlantic, 13 Jan. 2025
  • Even now, with no way to hide behind my usual euphemisms or analogies, emoting still feels at times too frank and candid.
    Hannah Seo, New York Times, 7 Jan. 2025
Noun
  • Bednar likes to use an analogy involving fixing holes in a boat.
    Corey Masisak, The Denver Post, 21 Jan. 2025
  • Use metaphors, anecdotes and real-world analogies to give your story depth and grounding.
    Sherzod Odilov, Forbes, 19 Jan. 2025
Noun
  • Here, instead, she’s swayed by a dead Diana softly squeezing her hand and kindly hinting — the dead Diana is an ace at tactful circumlocution — that now is the time to show a mourning nation some emotion.
    Tom Gliatto, Peoplemag, 16 Nov. 2023
  • By condensing Balzac’s opus to a few paragraphs, Barthelme was having a laugh not just at his predecessor’s genteel circumlocution—his tendency to describe buildings and manufacturing procedures and family trees in lavish detail—but also at the conventions of novelistic mimesis itself.
    Giles Harvey, The New York Review of Books, 23 Apr. 2020
Noun
  • Cats, however, may turn out to be the canaries in the coalmines — pardon the mixed metaphor.
    Jan Ellen Spiegel, Hartford Courant, 24 Dec. 2024
  • Yeah, that's probably a mixed metaphor, or actually a simile.
    Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 21 Jan. 2011
Noun
  • Rana recommends coming up with a secret code word to use with your family.
    Audrey Nguyen, NPR, 24 Dec. 2024
  • The guidelines had the opposite effect, encouraging streamers to lead with the code words they’d been barred from: a push against standards meant to actually censor players.
    Megan Farokhmanesh, WIRED, 20 Dec. 2024
Noun
  • Balloons are a potent metaphor for the series, according to Latta.
    Esther Zuckerman, Los Angeles Times, 24 Jan. 2025
  • Perhaps, their lack of synchronization serves as a quiet metaphor for the division within our nation.
    Kristen Waggoner, Newsweek, 21 Jan. 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Catachresis.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/catachresis. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

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