Grammar: Synecdoche, Ellipsis, Shorthand

Sometimes an adjective takes in the meaning of a noun it once qualified, but is now usually dropped. If you say “The atmosphere was fraught”, or “I’m feeling rather fraught”, listeners will understand that the atmosphere was strained, and that you feel tense. The entire phrase “fraught with tension” is taken as read. 

Synecdoche: “A figure of speech in which the name of a part is used to stand for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer)...” (American Heritage Dictionary)

But what do you call it when people use the same term for both the thing itself and our perception of it, or our possession of it?

I am right, you are wrong: It’s your statement that’s shown to be right or wrong, when compared with reality.

We must confront our fears: We must confront the things that make us frightened.

Early Man lived by a different kind of time: He lived by a different method of measuring or marking the passage of time.

The medieval mind was different from ours: Medieval ideas were different from ours.

There is no such thing as Truth because truths so often turn out to be false. This is switching from abstraction to specific examples, and pretending that “truth” (abstract noun meaning “trueness”) means the same as “statements put forward as truth”.


MORE SHORTHAND
aesthetic: aesthetically pleasing

bitter: bitterly contested 

character building: building good character

citizen: good citizen

dealing: drug dealing

discrimination: discrimination against

diversity: ethnic diversity

ecstatic, delirious, drained: ecstatically happy, delirious with joy, drained of all emotion

fashion scarves: high-fashion scarves

genetic food: genetically modified food

grant writing: grant-application writing

greenhouse emissions: greenhouse-gas emissions

infectious personality: personality whose gaiety is infectious

judge: judge unfavourably

livid: livid with rage

marital affairs: extramarital affairs 

outpouring, public outpouring: public outpouring of grief 

paramount: of paramount importance

prejudice: adverse prejudice

privilege: white privilege

prohibitive: prohibitively expensive

rabid: rabidly enthusiastic, furious 

race relations: good race relations

relevant: relevant to life in the 21st century 

social mobility: upward social mobility

value sweaters: good value

Even more rhetoric, equivocation and sophistry in my book Boo & Hooray: Dysphemisms and Euphemisms.