Grammar: Synecdoche 3

 

Candy striped

Part of a term comes to stand for the whole term.

You can’t just pander or be fodder. You have to pander to something or be fodder for something. (Fodder is animal food.)

I think we are barely starting to scratch the possibilities of language. (@ArturoGP_. Scratch the surface of...)

In Dickens, the Artful Dodger is known as "the Artful", and Susan Nipper as "the black-eyed". (Wasn't there a Greek goddess known as "the white-elbowed"?)


A podcast is now a “pod”. The pod was originally the device you listened to the podcast on.

About 40 years ago I was in a radio repair shop and overheard someone talk about his girlfriend’s “cassette” which was broken. He meant “cassette player”. But a “cassette” is a “tape cassette”, and the device was really a “tape player”.

“Hello, baby,” he said with his Cheshire smile. (The Love Machine, Jacqueline Susann. That’s “Cheshire-cat smile”.)

A flat is a flat tyre, but flats are flat shoes.

A paper carrier is a “carrier bag”. And if a “carrier” is a plane, it’s a “people carrier”.

Long-term progress has been glacial: It has moved at a glacial pace – a few inches a year, like a glacier.

hidebound: by tradition or convention
static park: park for static caravans

gyratory: gyratory system
dwell: dwell on it

dating to: dating back to (Shouldn't it be “dating from”?)
candy stripes: candy-cane stripes

sock: sock puppet
capsule: capsule wardrobe

contacts: contact lenses
dairy: dairy products

laser: laser printer
microwave: microwave oven

social housing, social homes: homes for poor people (From social services, “on the social”, social benefit?)

broach: broach the subject
raise: raise the question

Stap me vitals! Vital organs are meant.
town hall: town hall meeting

processed for commercially processed (which means “full of additives”)
Fracking is “Not very friendly”. (Environmentally friendly.)

divan: divan bed
sedan: sedan chair

the presence: the royal presence
the socials: social media

television: television set
viral: viral meme (Adjectiving is a young person’s thing.)

rending: heart-rending (not "wrenching")

We live in a fossil world. (A world that runs on fossil fuel, ie coal and oil.)

terrace: terraced house
hatch: hatchback

unscripted: unscripted programming
anti-trans: anti-trans ideology

Let’s drop the onshore wind ban: wind farm ban (The wind bloweth where it listeth.)

Get a grip! On yourself.

Raise X: raise concerns about X (“I’ll broach X about Y” means “I’ll broach the subject of Y with X”.

generous shed: generously proportioned shed
climate flooding: flooding caused by manmade global warming

incandescent: incandescent with rage

Master's: master’s degree (or “master of arts degree”)
hypopara (medical condition): hypoparathyroidism

windfall tax: windfall tax rebate (Puzzled me for years.)

Just seen “early onset” for “early onset Alzheimer’s”.

refinery: oil refinery
planning: planning consent

cleft: cleft palate
quality: high quality

Corny is short for cornball (“A ball of popcorn and molasses”, says the Free Dictionary.)
Slots are slot machines (playing the slots).
And “props” on aeroplanes are propellors. (Thought they were struts of some kind.)

More here, and links to the rest.