Is this lyric an example of a a metonym?

April 16, 2015 5:58 PM

U.K.'s song Rendezvous 602 begins: "It's five o' clock/Driving down Park Lane/As London leaves/For the weekend again"? Is "as London leaves" a case of metonymy, or is it something else? No prog rock shaming, please
posted by thelonius to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

Best answer: It might not be complicated, but it is metonymy, in that London the city doesn't leave, its inhabitants do. London serves as a metonym for the people of London.
posted by correcaminos at 6:19 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I vote yes, as well. It's the city standing in for its residents.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:22 PM on April 16, 2015

Best answer: Yes, that's metonymy. Metonymy is a very broad category of rhetorical substitutions; sometimes people get confused about exactly how broad because the most familiar, most commonly given examples are only of some specific type of metonymy (usually part for whole).
posted by RogerB at 6:30 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Would synechdoche also apply here (as a subset of metonymy)?

Can't link it right now but it's on the Wikipedia.
posted by ista at 7:40 PM on April 16, 2015

Would synechdoche also apply here (as a subset of metonymy)?

Synecdoche is a more specific form of metonymy where the part stands in for the whole, so it would not apply here. (London is not a part of the inhabitants of London).

An example of synecdoche would be something like "She commanded 100 rifles" (she didn't just command the rifles, she also commanded the people carrying them) or "I've got wheels" (I don't just have wheels, I have a whole car!).
posted by firechicago at 4:40 AM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

Actually, synecdoche works in two ways: part standing in for the whole; whole standing in for the part. So the London example could be argued to be metonymy if you want to make the case that the city is a "whole" and the citizens are a "part." I think that's a bit of a stretch, myself, and prefer to understand the figure ("London leaves") as depending on an associative (rather than a constitutive) connection.
posted by correcaminos at 11:25 AM on April 17, 2015