# Name this literary device

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-literary-device/642710>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [December 1, 2012, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-literary-device/642710 "2012-12-01T23:28:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Reyemile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@Reyemile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reyemile)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2012, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-literary-device/642710/1 "2012-12-01T23:28:28Z")

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Is there a name for a literary device of referring to different parts, aspects, or behaviors of a single object as if they were multiple individual objects?

I.E.

Marrying her was like marrying two people, a happy cheerful go-getter and a useless slobbering drunk.

There are many skies: the rainy sky, the dark sky, the cloudy sky, the sky with rays of sunlight.

I loved all of his faces, the crinkled eyes of his smiling face, the dimpled pout of his put-out face, and especially the clean, focused lines of the face he wore when working on his craft.

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-literary-device/642710/2 "2012-12-02T02:20:49Z")

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Moved to Cafe Society.

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**Author:** ![PSXer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@PSXer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PSXer)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2012, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-literary-device/642710/3 "2012-12-02T03:16:16Z")

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adjectives

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**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2012, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-literary-device/642710/4 "2012-12-02T03:37:24Z")

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I doubt there’s a word for this. I suggest we call it a “funesism,” after Funes, a character in a Borges short story who is incapable of generalizing, such that, for example, he sees a horse at 1:00 as a different thing than the same horse at 1:01. (This trait incapacitates him, so he just lies on his cot all day and reconstructs past moments in his head.)

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**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2012, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-literary-device/642710/5 "2012-12-02T07:29:25Z")

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compartmentalization