CATACHRESIS (Grk. “misuse, misapplication”): A completely impossible figure of speech or an implied metaphor that results from combining other extreme figures of speech such as anthimeria, hyperbole, synaesthesia, and metonymy. The results in each case are so unique that it is hard to state a general figure of speech that embodies all of the possible results. It is far easier to give examples.
For instance, Hamlet says of Gertrude, “I will speak daggers to her.” A man can speak words, but no one can literally speak daggers. In spite of that impossibility, readers know Shakespeare means Hamlet will address Gertrude in a painful, contemptuous way. Sometimes the catachresis results from stacking one impossibility on top of another.
Can’t you hear that? Are you blind?
Red trains cough Jewish underwear for keeps! Expanding smells of silence. Gravy snot whistling like sea birds.”
(Amiri Baraka, The Dutchman)
“Joe will have kittens when he hears this!”
Catachresis often results from hyperbole and synaesthesia. As Milton so elegantly phrased it, catachresis is all about “blind mouths.”
A special subtype of catachresis is abusio, a mixed metaphor that results when two metaphors collide. For instance, one U. S. senator learned of an unlikely political alliance. He is said to have exclaimed, “Now that is a horse of a different feather.” This abusio is the result of two metaphors. The first is the cliché metaphor comparing anything unusual to “a horse of a different color.” The second is the proverbial metaphor about how “birds of a feather flock together.” However, by taking the two dead metaphors and combining them, the resulting image of “a horse of a different feather” truly emphasizes how bizarre and unlikely the resulting political alliance was. Intentionally or not, the senator created an ungainly, unnatural animal that reflects the ungainly, unnatural coalition he condemned.
Purists of languages often scowl at abusio with good reason. Too commonly abusio is the result of sloppy writing, such as the history student who wrote “the dreadful hand of totalitarianism watches all that goes on around it and growls at its enemies.” (It would have been better to stick with a single metaphor and state “the eye of totalitarianism watches all that goes on around it and glares at its enemies.” We should leave out the mixed imagery of watchful hands growling at people; it’s just stupid and inconsistent.) However, when used intentionally for a subtle effect, abusio and catachresis can be powerful tools for originality.