Catachrestical

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Involving the misapplication or incorrect use of a term beyond its proper semantic boundaries, or characterized by such linguistic stretching
2. Pertaining to the use of terms in a way that extends or distorts their original meanings beyond standard usage
3. Connected with applying words or expressions in unconventional or erroneous contexts that deviate from their precise definitions

Etymology: Catachrestical comes from "catachresis," a rhetorical term borrowed from Late Latin "catachresis," which in turn came from Greek "katachrēsis," meaning "misuse" or "abuse." The Greek word is built from "kata-," meaning "against" or "amiss," and "chrēsis," meaning "use," from "chraomai," "to use." So the root idea is simply using something wrongly or beyond its proper function. The word entered English in the 16th century, when writers on rhetoric needed a name for a figure of speech in which a word is stretched to cover something it does not strictly denote, such as "the leg of a table" or "to mouth a argument." Classical rhetoricians such as Quintilian treated catachresis as a deliberate, sometimes necessary, departure from proper usage, especially where no ordinary word existed for the thing described. The adjective "catachrestical" adds the suffix "-ical," a common English ending that turns nouns into adjectives, so it means "relating to catachresis." Its meaning has stayed close to the rhetorical sense, though it is now rare and most readers will meet the noun first.