Have you ever said “Nice wheels!” to someone while complimenting their car? If you have, you’ve used a synecdoche (pronounced sih-NEK-duh-kee). This figure of speech is something that most of us use often, maybe even daily, but it’s not usually identified by name outside of an English or public-speaking class. Let’s explore one of rhetoric’s most underrated tricks.
A synecdoche is an expression that uses a part to stand for a whole. For instance, “wheels” represents a whole car — when praising someone’s “nice wheels,” you obviously aren’t complimenting only their tires. In the same way, the expression “mouths to feed” refers to hungry people, with “mouth” representing part of a whole person. “Faces in the crowd” and “hand in marriage” are other common examples of synecdoche using body parts to replace people or a person.
A synecdoche also can be composed in reverse, using the whole to describe a part, as in “Kansas City won the 2025 Super Bowl.” Here, the name of the entire city is used to describe part of it: the football team.
Metonyms and synecdoches are closely related, but they’re not exactly the same. A metonym employs a word that is closely associated with a concept to stand in for it, such as “the crown” for the British monarchy or “the press” for journalists. This tool is less literal and more metaphorical.
So, the next time you hear someone say, “All hands on deck!” or ask, “What’s the head count?” you’ll know a synecdoche is hard at work to add a little more flair into daily conversations.
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