• Cryptonymy

    Origin

    - + crypto + -

    Full definition of cryptonymy

    Noun

    cryptonymy

    (plural cryptonymies)
    1. The use of code names or cryptonyms.
      • 1994, Nicolas Abraham, ‎Maria Torok, & ‎Nicholas Thomas Rand, The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, The concepts of cryptonymy and preservative repression (the latter discussed directly below) stipulate the collapse of the revelatory properties of the symptom and language.
      • 2014, Esther Rashkin , Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative , In contradistinction to this view, Abraham and Torok's theory of cryptonymy construes the bar or sign of repression as an object of investigation that gives itself to be read.
      • 2014, Daniel Tiffany , My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch, The cryptonymy of the appropriated text can also operate at the level of vernacular expression, or depersonalized forms of public language—such as advertising copy—whereby the common phrases or idioms sampled in a poem may disclose submerged conditions of social antagonism or distress.
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