Catachresis (from Greek κατάχρησις, "misuse"), originally meaning a semantic misuse or error—e.g., using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe", "travesty" for "tragedy", "anachronism" for "anomaly", "alibi" for "excuse", etc.—is also the name given to many different types of figures of speech in which a word or phrase is being applied in a way that significantly departs from conventional (or traditional) usage.
[1] As a rhetorical figure, catachresis may signify an unexpected or implausible metaphor.
[citation needed] In Jacques Derrida's ideas of deconstruction, catachresis refers to the original incompleteness that is a part of all systems of meaning.
[10][citation needed] Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak applies this word to "master words" that claim to represent a group, e.g., women or the proletariat, when there are no "true" examples of "woman" or "proletarian".
thus denote a catachresis, a word with an arbitrary[clarification needed] connection to its meaning.