paronomasia

Etymology

From Latin paronomasia, from Ancient Greek παρονομασία (paronomasía, “play upon words which sound alike”), from παρα- (para-) + ὀνομασία (onomasía, “naming”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pæɹənəˈmeɪzɪə/

Noun

paronomasia (plural paronomasias)

1. (rhetoric) A pun or play on words
   • 1984, Anthony Burgess, Enderby's Dark Lady:

     […] he gloomily regarded his new digital watch, faintly fascinated by the onward march of the square figures which turned one into the other with insolent ease, a kind of numerical paronomasia.

   • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon:

     Ev’rywhere but at Norfolk, where talk of Passion far outweighs its Enactment,– indeed, the Sailors’ Paronomasia for that wretched Place, is ‘No-Fuck’.

References

• Silva Rhetoricae

Etymology

From Ancient Greek παρονομασία (paronomasía, “play upon words which sound alike”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /pa.ro.noˈma.si.a/, [pa.rɔ.nɔˈma.si.a]

Noun

paronomasia f (genitive paronomasiae); first declension

1. A figure of speech; pun or play on words which sound alike but have different meanings, paronomasia.

References

• paronomasia in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• paronomasia in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• paronomasia in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• Ryan Stark, Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 190-95.