Kenning
A compressed metaphorical compound — like 'whale-road' for the sea — drawn from Old Norse and Old English verse.
A kenning is a compact metaphorical phrase, usually two nouns joined into a compound, used in place of an ordinary noun. Old English and Old Norse poets used them constantly: 'whale-road' or 'swan's-path' for the sea, 'battle-sweat' for blood, 'sky-candle' for the sun. Beowulf is thick with them.
Kennings compress a whole image into a phrase and, at their best, ask the reader to see a familiar thing sideways. They are close cousins of the modern metaphor, but they behave more like riddles: the reader must decode the compound before the image lands.
The device survives, quietly, in modern speech. 'Bookworm', 'sawbones', 'pencil-pusher', and 'ambulance-chaser' are all recognisable kennings, and much slang works the same way. When a modern quote lands hard on a single compound noun — 'attention economy', 'thought leader', 'moral panic' — it is often exploiting the same compression the Old Norse poets used a thousand years ago.
“whale-road (for the sea)”
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A figure of speech that describes one thing as if it were another.
A figure where the part stands for the whole, or the whole for the part.
Calling something by the name of an associated thing — 'the crown' for 'the monarchy'.
A newly coined word or expression, often minted to capture something the existing vocabulary cannot.