What term describes the replacement of a full description of an object with a reference to one of its specific features? [duplicate]

What term in literary analysis describes the process in which we replace the full description of an object with a reference to just one aspect of it, e.g. 'It is a Rembrandt' instead of 'It is a painting by Rembrandt'.

Thank you!

The answer is a "metonymy", a figure of speech in which something is not called by its name. Instead, it's called by the name of something associated with it.

Examples:

• "The White House" decided... meaning "The U.S. President"
• "The Crown"... instead of the British Royal Family.
• "I am" parked a few blocks from...instead of "my car".
• "They have a "Picasso" in... meaning "a painting by Picasso"

A word used metonymically (Rembrandt) is a metonym.

Definition of METONIMY

A figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”)

Metonymies are frequently used in literature and in everyday speech. A metonymy is a word or phrase that is used to stand in for another word. Sometimes a metonymy is chosen because it is a well-known characteristic of the word.

One famous example of metonymy is the saying, "The pen is mightier than the sword," which originally came from Edward Bulwer Lytton's play Richelieu. This sentence has two examples of metonymy:

• The "pen" stands in for "the written word."
• The "sword" stands in for "military aggression and force."

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy