Catachresis

Catachresis is the stylistic combination of logically or semantically incompatible words used in a figurative sense, resulting in an inwardly contradictory but expressive image: "red ink," "burning ice." Catachresis arises either through the erasure of metaphoricity (when the figurative meaning has become fixed in the language as the only name of an object, as with the legs of a chair) or as a deliberate bold device on the border of linguistic norm that strikes by the unusualness of the combination. In the first case catachresis is imperceptible and common; in the second it becomes a means of emphatic, even shocking imagery. This concept is important for understanding the mechanisms of metaphorical transfer and the limits of word compatibility, and for analysing avant-garde poetics with its orientation toward the violation of habitual connections.