Institutio Oratoria

Flasks are called acetabula, [*](Lit. vinegar flasks.) whatever they contain, and caskets pyxides, [*](i.e. made of boxwood. ) of whatever material they are made, while parricide includes the murder of a mother or a brother. We must be careful to distinguish between abuse and metaphor, since the former is employed where there is no proper term available, and the latter when there is another term available. As for poets, they indulge in the abuse of words even in cases where proper terms do exist, and substitute words of somewhat similar meaning. But this is rare in prose.

Some, indeed, would give the name of catachresis even to cases such as where we call temerity valour or prodigality liberality. I, however, cannot agree with them; for in these

There is but one of the tropes involving change of meaning which remains to be discussed, namely, metalepsis or transumption, which provides a transition from one trope to another. It is (if we except comedy) but rarely used in Latin, and is by no means to be commended, though it is not infrequently employed by the Greeks, who, for example, call Χείρων the centaur Ἥσσων [*](Χείρων and ἥσσων both mean inferior. ) and substitute the epithet θοαί (swift) for ὄξειαι [*](cp. Od. xv. 298. Θοός is used elsewhere to express sharpness. ) in referring to sharp-pointed islands. But who would endure a Roman if he called Verres sus [*](Verres =boar; Catus=wise.) or changed the name of Aelius Catus to Aelius doctus?

It is the nature of metalepsis to form a kind of intermediate step between the term transferred and the thing to which it is transferred, having no meaning in itself, but merely providing a transition. It is a trope with which to claim acquaintance, rather than one which we are ever likely to require to use. The commonest example is the following: cano is a synonym for canto and canto [*](In the sense of to repeat.) for dico, therefore cano is a synonym for dico, the intermediate step being provided by canto.