[35]
Flasks are called acetabula,1 whatever they contain,
and caskets pyxides,2 of whatever material they are
made, while parricide includes the murder of a
mother or a brother. We must be careful to
distinguish between abuse and metaphor, since the
former is employed where there is no proper term
available, and the latter when there is another term
available. As for poets, they indulge in the abuse
of words even in cases where proper terms do exist,
and substitute words of somewhat similar meaning.
But this is rare in prose.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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