A Marianas metonym

One of the most reckless things you can do is send me to the market with a shopping list. To me, shopping is just an excuse to be a delinquent. I’ll buy a few random things that catch my eye and, well, that’s pretty much all I’ll do. This explains the box of cookies on the floor. It also explains how I’ve got a cool new word to play with: metonym. See? Shopping can lead to all sorts of adventures, at least if you know how to do it wrong.

First of all, let’s take a look at these cookies. They came in a box, of course, but this isn’t just any box. It is a metal “retro radio” box. It looks like an old-fashioned portable radio from back when a radio was the size of a lunch box. And, in fact, this thing opens like a lunch box. I thought it was cool. That’s why I bought the cookies.

While the world’s marketing pros rub their hands in glee that rubes like me still exist, I’m going to note a linguistic angle here: I had bought the things contained (the cookies) for the container (the metal box). Put in those terms, this quirky event gives me no end of amusement.

I’m not the only one, and, in fact, this is some old shtick. “A Thing Contained For the Container” as opposed to “a Container For The Thing Contained” was a riff from American author James Thurber. In his 1942 short story, Here Lies Miss Groby, Thurber gets obsessed with the notion.

Here’s a famous example of the concept, not from Thurber, but from history: “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.” This phrase is not beseeching people to cut off their ears and pass them to the orator. The term “ears,” of course, signifies the hearing that the ears contain. In other words, as they say in the military: “listen up.”

So with this example we see a Container (ears) For The Things Contained (hearing).

Would you believe there’s a fancy word for this technique of language? There is. It’s “metonym.”

I don’t know many “nym” words, so this one is a shiny new addition to my thin inventory.

Let’s see, there’s “synonym” for words that mean the same thing. There’s “antonym” for words that mean opposite things. There’s “homonym” for words that have the same spelling but different meanings.

And, there’s “momnthym.” This is the most important word on my list. It’s a Southern contraction for “mom and them.” If you ever go to the land of Dixie and someone asks, “How’s your momnthym?” you can just say, “They are fine, suh, and they send their regards.”

Anyway, back to this metonym thing. We use them all the time without even thinking about it. If I mention that a popular brew is the “island’s favorite beer,” I don’t mean that the island likes to drink beer. Islands are hunks of rock. They don’t imbibe. What I mean, of course, is that the inhabitants like to drink the beer. The container (the island) is used as a reference for the things contained (the people on the island). That’s our Marianas metonym.

I’ll just pull a couple of other examples out of thin air, not because you care, but because I have nothing else to think about. We can say, for example, “The entire bus was scared when the driver hit the brakes,” or, “The classroom heaved a sigh of relief when the teacher canceled the test.” If you took these sentences literally, they wouldn’t make any sense. But, of course, they do make sense, thanks to the magical power of the metonym.

I’m sure that deep within the bowels of some giant think-tank, an Artificial Intelligence technician is listing as many metonyms as possible. That way, in the future, when you’re eating dinner and you tell your Jeeves 2.0 Butler-bot to pass the salt, the robot will hand you the shaker instead of showering you with grains of salt.

Well, thus far, if you’re keeping score, you may have noted that we’re up against a stacked deck. The Container For The Thing Contained is represented with abundant examples. By contrast, it’s a bit harder to come up with an example of a Thing Contained For The Container.

This was Thurber’s problem, and the central issue in Here Lies Miss Groby. Thurber finally concocts a solution, so let’s join the story at this point and lend him our ears:

“If a woman were to grab up a bottle of Grade A and say to her husband, ‘Get away from me or I’ll hit you with the milk,’ that would be a Thing Contained for the Container.”

Thus spoke Thurber. Problem solved.

But if you think getting hit with the milk hurts, let me tell you that getting beaned with the cookies is no picnic, either.

I really hope that your holiday preparations are going better than ours are. In the meantime, please tell your momnthym that I send my regards for Thanksgiving.