Pars pro toto
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Pars pro toto (
In the context of language, pars pro toto means that something is named after a part or subset of it, or after a limited characteristic, which in itself is not necessarily representative of the whole. For example, "
Geography
An example of a pars pro toto in geography is the use of the capital to refer generally to the country such as Washington for the United States, Beijing for China, or Moscow for Russia. When the capital is used to refer specifically to the country's government, the figure of speech is a metonymy rather than a pars pro toto.
Certain
- "Aotearoa" for New Zealand
- "Antigua" for Antigua and Barbuda
- "Habsburg-ruled lands
- "The Balkans" to include historically related parts of southeastern Europe as well as the Balkan Peninsula, or for the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia
- "former Czech lands, now the Czech Republic
- "Bosnia" for Bosnia and Herzegovina
- "Denmark" for the erstwhile Kingdom of Denmark–Norway
- "Great Britain" for the United Kingdom
- "Netherlands (terminology)
- Swarnadwipa (Sumatra), and Sunda Islands (Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Bali, East & West Nusa Tenggara), for Indonesia(all of those and Papua & Maluku Islands)
- "Laurentia" for Canada
- "Monte Carlo" for Monaco
- "Muscovy" for Russia
- "former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
- "Newfoundland" for what is now called Newfoundland and Labrador
- "Patagonia" for the entirety of the Southern Cone
- "Peru" for the former Inca Empire and the Viceroyalty or Kingdom of Peru
- "former Kingdom of Sardinia
- "Poland" for the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
- "Prussia" for the former German Empire
- "Russia" (or "Soviet Russia") for the former Soviet Union
- "Saint Helena" for Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha
- "Saint Vincent" for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- "São Tomé" for São Tomé and Príncipe
- "Scandinavia" for the Nordic countries or Fennoscandia
- "
- "South America" for the partially overlapping concept of Latin America
- "South Pole" for Antarctica
- "Sweden" for the former Sweden-Norway
- "Tahiti" for French Polynesia
- "
- "Tel Aviv - Yafo
- "Trinidad" for Trinidad and Tobago
- "Turkey" for the former Ottoman Empire
Demonyms and ethnic groups
- "Yankee" for all Americans (despite the original meaning of the word being of an inhabitant of New England)
- "medieval and early modernperiods)
- "Alemanni" for all Germanic peoples (used first by the Romans and later by the speakers of Romance languages)
Other examples
Body parts for body
Body parts are often colloquially used to refer to the whole body, as in:
- "skin" ("save your skin")
- "hide" ("the teacher will have my hide")
- "mouth" ("mouth to feed")
- "head" ("head count")
- "face" ("famous faces")
- "hand" ("all hands on deck")
- "eyeballs" (television audience)
- "guts" ("hate someone's guts")
- "back" ("get off my back")
- "brain" for intelligence or a smart person, as in "the class brain" or "the brains of the operation" or "where's your brain"
- "neck" ("save one's neck")
- "butt" or "ass", used to indicate a person's entire self or body ("get your butt on a plane" or "the boss fired my ass")
- "body" for a whole person, as in "can't a body have some peace and quiet?"
- "soul", meaning a whole person, as "don't tell a soul"
Subdivisions of companies
The names of affiliates or subdivisions of large corporations are sometimes used to refer to the entire corporation:
- Chevrolet, Holden (in Oceania), or Opel (in Europe) to represent the entirety of General Motors, where using the most common GM brand in each region represents the entirety of General Motors
- Activision or Blizzard to refer to holding parent company Activision Blizzard
Others
Other examples include an individual object being used to refer to a larger object or group of which it is a part:
- "bread" for food in general, as in "my job puts bread in my children's mouths"
- "commodities to be traded
- "Big Ben" for Elizabeth Tower
- "motor" for automobile (as in the corporation General Motors or the word "Motors" used in the name of a car dealership)
- similarly, "wheels" for automobile, "jet" for jet(-propelled) airplane, "sail" for sailing ship
- "gun" used to refer to the shooter as well as his firearm (e.g., "he was a hired gun")
See also
References
- ^ "pars pro toto". Pars pro toto - definition of pars pro toto in English | Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford Living Dictionaries: English. Archived from the original on September 26, 2016. Retrieved 2018-01-19.
- ^ "pars pro toto". Merriam-Webster. 2012-08-31. Retrieved 2014-02-03.