[37]
There is but one of the tropes involving change of
meaning which remains to be discussed, namely,
metalepsis or transumption, which provides a transition
from one trope to another. It is (if we except
comedy) but rarely used in Latin, and is by no means
to be commended, though it is not infrequently
employed by the Greeks, who, for example, call Χείρων
the centaur Ἥσσων1 and substitute the epithet θοαί
(swift) for ὄξειαι2 in referring to sharp-pointed
islands. But who would endure a Roman if he
called Verres sus3 or changed the name of Aelius
Catus to Aelius doctus?
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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