enallage

1 9.9

To use one grammar form instead of another in speech or writing

noun
/ɪˈnælədʒi/

Literature

: enálage

Enallage: when we substitute or exchange one gender, number, case, person, mood, tense, or part of speech for another.

Examples

An example of enallage can be found when a writer uses plural terms to refer to an individual, creating a unique rhetorical effect.
In English, it is difficult to understand why a speaker or writer would want to use enallage, except for ridicule (calling a man "she," for example).

Academic text (1997)
Enallage, in its various subforms, is a foregrounded device of Huck Finn and many of the other ungrammatical speakers in The Adventures.

Academic text (1997)
In poetry, enallage allows authors to switch between tenses to evoke different emotions and enhance the narrative.
The use of enallage in everyday speech can be humorous, such as referring to a group of people as 'youse' instead of 'you all.'

Surface Forms

enallage singular

enalleges plural

Etymology

Enallage comes from an old Greek word made of en- ('in') and allagē ('change' or 'exchange'), so it literally means 'change'. A helpful image is an actor changing costume on stage: enallage is a writer's on-purpose swap of one grammatical form (like tense or pronoun) for another to create a strong effect.