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I am not sure if this is possible. I would like to use a metonymy with an idiom, and it doesn't seem to be something people ever did, so it feels wrong.

I have the following sentence:

He was in the middle of our fedora hats celebrating our victory.

I am using it to mean the following:

He was in the middle of our (mafia) family celebrating our victory.

Not only it sounds weird, but it sounds wrong. I don't think there's something I did wrong, but the combination of the two makes it really weird. So can we combine the two or not?

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The problem is more the meter of the sentence. How you say things makes as big of an impact as what you say.

The problem is furthered by the fact what you're trying to replace with "fedora hats", "mafia family". It feels bulky and cumbersome to the flow of the sentence. Most metonymies tend to be syllabalically shorter than what they replace. Sometimes the same length. They are almost never longer. "But 'fedora hats' is shorter than 'mafia family'!" But it's longer than "family."

In short, if you want to make a metonymy work better, try to use a three-syllable-or-less version.

This doesn't even start going into the issues based on if people will understand your metonymy. Establish that everyone is wearing fedoras then refer to the family as "hats" and that MAY work. Let's see how the sentence flows, knowing full well that this assumes fedoras were previously mentioned explicitly and clearly.

He was in the middle of our hats, celebrating our victory.

Sounds better to me. Is it perfect? Eh, not really, but perfection isn't the goal, improvement is.

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Sora Tamashii
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I don't think the problem is the combination, it is the unfamiliar metonymy. The use of "fedora hats" to mean "Mafia family" is just not common enough for the reader not to be thrown out of the text, saying "What did that mean" and probably coming to a wrong answer. If a more familiar metonymy with a bit of context is used, such as:

It was election night. He was in the middle of the elephants celebrating our victory.

Where "the elephants" is being used to mean "members of the Republican party" -- a very comon expression, mostly in visual cartoons, I think it works.

If there is extra context, if "fedora hats" has previously been established to have this meaning in this story it might work. Or even:

All the Family was there, particularly Frank. He was in the middle of our Fedora Hats celebrating our victory.

might work.

I might add, there really isn't much of an idiom here.

David Siegel
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Stop trying to make "fedora hats" happen. It will never happen.

--Regina George

You are missing both an idiom and a metonymy

and by the way, a metonymy would be a little bit more pithy.. like "fedoras" ... even then it will still never happen.

ashleylee
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