Metonyms and meronyms

The example of foot₂ above illustrates a particular kind of sense relation, in which a word associated with another is used to stand for it: this is termed metonymy, and the relationship here is between a part and its whole (cf. the head of the company, or indeed the head of a phrase). In other cases, the relationship is between a symbol and the institution, place or person it represents, for example the White House for the US President or Downing Street for the UK Prime Minister. Other relationships of metonymy might involve, for example, a container and its contents, as in he was overly fond of the bottle meaning ‘he was partial to the bottle’s alcoholic contents’. A metonym generally has a symbolic relationship with what it denotes (a head of department is not a literal ‘head’, obviously), but the term meronym refers to something which constitutes a part of something else, e.g. arm is a meronym of body.