From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishsynecdochesy‧nec‧do‧che /sɪˈnekdəki/ noun [countable, uncountable] technical the practice of using the name of a part of something to refer to the whole thing, or using the name of a whole thing to refer to part of it. An example of synecdoche is saying “There are some new faces in the team” rather than “There are some new people in the team”.