synecdoche
noun
a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole or whole for a part or general for the special or vice versa.
this one's a little tricky so here are some examples:
Photographers had to resort to visual synecdoche, hoping that a small part of the scene -- a wailing child, an emaciated mother, a pile of corpses in a freshly dug trench -- would suggest the horrors of the whole.
~ Paul Gray, Looking At Cataclysms, Time, August 1, 1994
We're using the part-for-whole type of synecdoche, for instance, when we describe a smart person as a "brain."
~ We Live by the Brand, Hartford Courant, August 9, 1995
i felt almost bullied into having this as 'word of the day' because not only did it show up in my inbox as today's 'word of the day' is was also yesterday's... no glitch - it wasn't the service i subscribe to accidentally sending the same e-mail off twice. each e-mail proudly proclaims that the "Word of the Day for Wednesday, October 22, 2008" and the "Word of the Day for Tuesday, October 21, 2008" are both synecdoche.
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