According to Sound and Sense, metonymy is the use of something closely related for the thing actually meant.  It substitutes some significant detail or quality of an experience for the experience itself (78).  Often the substitution is based on a material, casual, or, conceptual relation between things.  John Keats uses metonymy when he exclaims, “O, for a draught of vintage!” in his poem “Ode to a Nightingale”.  In this phrase, “vintage” is substitution for “wine”.  Another example of metonymy is in Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out-” when he describes a boy holding up his hand “Half in appeal, but half as if to keep /The life from spilling”.  What Frost actually meant was that the boy was holding up his hand to keep his blood from spilling.  Sound and Sense explains that by using metonymy, a poem “gains in compactness, vividness, or meaning” (page 78).  Metonymy is very effective when it comes to adding interest or style to a written work.  It is also serves to be a useful literary device for an author who wants to avoid using the same word or phrase repetitively.

What I found interesting about metonymy is how often it is used in daily conversation.  For example, when we ask someone to “lend a hand”, what we actually mean is that we need help.   When we say “redhead”, we mean a person with red hair. Without realizing it, metonymy is all around us and, because we use metonymy so often, it seems odd to consider these examples figurative.