Catachresis

Using words against each other – that's what this word means in ancient Greek.

Here are some examples from some once loved lyrics:

Dance me to the end of love.
She lives on love street.
Love in the first degree.
Bad case of loving you.
What time is love?
Lay a whisper on my pillow.

Every single one of the above, though sometimes beautiful, can be only scarcely an exact use of language. Dance me to the end of love, for just one example. What? Love's end? Where exactly is that? Love in the first degree? What is the third degree please? And so on. You can do the rest!

Catachresis – getting it deliberately wrong.

Thunderbirds are go.

Tom Robbins on a Full Moon

"The moon was full. The moon was so bloated it was about to tip over. Imagine awakening to find the moon flat on its face on the bathroom floor, like the late Elvis Presley, poisoned by banana splits. It was a moon that could stir wild passions in a moo cow. A moon that could bring out the devil in a bunny rabbit. A moon that could turn lug nuts into moonstones turn Little Red Riding Hood into the big bad wolf."

(Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker, 1980)

Catachresis – so like other magical tricks! So like other imaginations!

Metaphors and similes are its first cousins. Even so, the dear old catachresis gets put in the corner and given the dunce's hat. It is called “abuse” (abusio) and even an outrage (audacia) by the otherwise great Quintillian, the ancient Roman expert on language, who ought to have known better.

Advertising worships catachresis with incense:

Here's how to do it.

Think of your product – say a car.

Now think of something that you like very much.

Add both and stir...

Let's take one car at random – say, the long established Datsun. If we include all makes of car it will be boring. So let's don't.

One thing everyone can learn from catachresis: push the boat out to the moon! Think puffy clouds in a stormy sky!

(The catachresis is the elder brother to the metaphor, which depends on sense not sensibility.)

PS Exposing catachresis in some meetings might be a good thing to do? There seems to be a lot of it about in management-speak.