Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 8, chapter 6, section 34

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[34] These facts make catachresis (of which abuse is a correct translation) all the more necessary. By this term is meant the practice of adapting the nearest available term to describe something for which no actual term exists, as in the line

A horse they build by Pallas' art divine,
Aen. II. xv. It is an abuse to say aedficant, which means literally "they make a house.

or as in the expression found in tragedy,

“To Aigialeus
His sire bears funeral offerings,
”¹

The following examples are of a similar character.

1 Perhaps from the Medus of Pacuvius It is an abuse to useparental of funeral offerings made by father to son.

Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.

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