Metonymy is a figure of speech in which a thing is referred to by the name of something closely associated with it. The substitution is based on contiguity rather than resemblance.

“The White House announced” means the presidential administration announced. “The pen is mightier than the sword” substitutes tools for the activities of writing and warfare. “Hollywood” can mean the American film industry. Metonymy is pervasive in everyday language and in literature; it allows compression and can carry cultural or emotional associations that the literal term lacks.

Metonymy differs from metaphor, which is based on similarity, and from synecdoche, which substitutes a part for the whole or the whole for a part (though the boundary is often blurred). Journalists, politicians, and poets all rely on metonymic shortcuts. The figure works when the association is clear to the audience; when the link is obscure, the expression fails.

When an associated term stands in for the thing itself, the figure is metonymy.