Catachresis has two meanings: the use of the wrong word for the context, and the use of a forced or especially paradoxical figure of speech.
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Dead people in a graveyard being referred to as inhabitants is an example of catachresis.
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The grammatically incorrect use of words for creative expression. Example: Hamlet saying "I will speak daggers"—a catachresis since one cannot literally "speak a dagger".
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In Jacques Derrida's ideas of deconstruction, catachresis refers to the original incompleteness that is a part of all systems of meaning. He proposes that metaphor and catachresis are tropes that ground philosophical discourse. Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak applies this word to "master words" that claim to represent a group, e.g., women or the proletariat, when there are no "true" examples of "woman" or "proletarian".
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In a similar way, words that are imposed upon people and are deemed improper thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary connection to its meaning.
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Fabliaux derive a lot of their force from puns and other verbal figures; "fabliaux . . . are obsessed with wordplay." Especially important are paranomasia and catachresis, tropes which disrupt ordinary signification and displace ordinary meaningsRoot 19.—by similarity of sound, for instance, one can have both "con" and "conte" ("cunt" and "tale") in the same word, a common pun in fabliaux.
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In chapter X, titled Of Tropes and Figures: and first of the variegating, confusing and reversing Figures, Pope explains the comic use of the tropes and figures of speech.William Kurtz Wimsatt, Monroe C. Beardsley (1954) The verbal icon p.176 This part is continued in chapter XI, titled The Figures continued: Of the Magnifying and Diminishing Figures. Among the figures covered are: Catachresis.
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Catachresis (from Greek , "abuse"), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error—e.g., using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc.—is also the name given to many different types of figures of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage.
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In metonymical extension, one word often replaces another; we may replace a part for a whole. For example, saying "refrigerator" when shown a picture of a kitchen, or saying "White house" in place of "President." When controlling variables unrelated to standard or immediate reinforcement take over control of the tact, it is said to be solecistically extended. Malapropisms, solecism and catachresis are examples of this.
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He says, "To call a comprehensive treatment of one subject an "encyclopaedia" is a catachresis known already in medieval China, where the term leishu, properly a collection of classical texts on many fields, came to be applied to similar treatments of one subject only, for instance the use of jade".Fowler, Robert L. (1997), "Encyclopaedias: Definitions and Theoretical Problems", in P. Binkley, Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, Brill, p. 9.
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132 and states, "A knowledge of black linguistic regionalisms and folklore enhances the appreciation of Angelou's poems". Hagen believes that despite the signifying that occurs in many of Angelou's poems, the themes and topics are universal enough that all readers would understand and appreciate them. DeGout states that Angelou conveys meaning through literary imagery, denser vocabulary, and poetic techniques such as catachresis, ambiguity, and anthropomorphism. Angelou's use of language frees her readers from their traditional perceptions and beliefs about human experience.
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In other words, "catachresis," the inappropriate use of a word or figure of speech that keeps the discourse in motion, an interplay of attractions and repulsions that ceaselessly promote domains off-centered to one another,The Rule of Metaphor trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977). much like that "ever-renewed experiment in making its own beginning." But Winquist argued that theology had become indistinguishable from history, philosophy, and other disciplines.
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Aristotle wrote in the Poetics that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor." Since the rise of Modernism, some poets have opted for a poetic diction that de-emphasizes rhetorical devices, attempting instead the direct presentation of things and experiences and the exploration of tone. On the other hand, Surrealists have pushed rhetorical devices to their limits, making frequent use of catachresis. Allegorical stories are central to the poetic diction of many cultures, and were prominent in the West during classical times, the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
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In English, poetic diction has taken multiple forms, but it generally mirrors the habits of Classical literature. Highly metaphoric adjective use, for example, can, through catachresis, become a common "poetic" word (e.g. the "rosy-fingered dawn" found in Homer, when translated into English, allows the "rose fingered" to be taken from its Homeric context and used generally to refer not to fingers, but to a person as being dawn-like). In the 16th century, Edmund Spenser (and, later, others) sought to find an appropriate language for the Epic in English, a language that would be as separate from commonplace English as Homeric Greek was from koine.
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