hypallage

Meaning

Noun

• her beauty's face - "her" face not "her beauty's"
  
• I can't knock the smirk off his stupid face - the thing that is referred to being stupid is "him", and not "his face"
  
• A construction in which a modifier with meaning associated with one word appears grammatically applied to another, often used as a literary device.

Related

Similar words

• transferred epithet

Origin

• From Latin hypallage, itself a borrowing from Ancient Greek ὑπαλλαγή, from ὑπό + ἀλλάσσειν.