Catachresis
Figures of speechA lexicalized metaphor that became the usual name of something otherwise unnamed: the legs of a table, the hands of a clock.
Example
"The legs of the table," "the hands of the clock," "a sheet of paper."
Catachresis is a metaphor frozen by usage to name what had no proper word: the "legs" of a table, the "hands" of a clock, a "sheet" of paper. Language is full of these dead images — we no longer see the image, only the thing.
For the writer, catachresis is above all a playground: waking one up produces an effect at minimal cost. Writing that the table "walked off on its four legs" reactivates the buried image, amusing or unsettling. Spotting the language's catachreses also helps you avoid building a "real" metaphor on an already-dead image — one of the most common mechanics of cliché.
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