Hypallage (/haɪˈpælədʒiː/; from the Greek: ὑπαλλαγή, hypallagḗ, "interchange, exchange") is a figure of speech in which the syntactic relationship between two terms is interchanged,[1] or – more frequently – a modifier is syntactically linked to an item other than the one that it modifies semantically.
[2] The latter type of hypallage, typically resulting in the implied personification of an inanimate or abstract noun, is also called a transferred epithet.
Examples may include Book of Job 21:6, where "my flesh seizes trembling" seems to mean "trembling seizes my flesh" [4] and Psalms 116:15, where "precious in the eyes of the LORD is death, as to his faithful ones" seems to mean "the life of his faithful ones is precious in the eyes of the LORD," so he does not lightly let them die.
Examples of transferred epithets are "the winged sound of whirling" (δίνης πτερωτὸς φθόγγος), meaning "the sound of whirling wings" (Aristophanes, Birds 1198), and Horace's "angry crowns of kings" (iratos...regum apices, Odes 3.21.19f.).
Literary critic Gérard Genette argued that the frequent use of hypallage is characteristic of Marcel Proust's style.