Term for intentionally using a word in a context inconsistent with its definition

Is there a term that describes an instance where someone intentionally uses a word in a context inconsistent with the word’s literal definition?

I spent a long time trying to phrase it correctly. Here’s an example of what I’m trying to get at:

I’m reading a book in which the author writes the following: “While there is no single method that can do it all, the set of tools offer a powerful instrumentarium for better understanding and, ultimately, designing systems.”

According to Merriam-Webster, an instrumentarium is “The equipment needed for a particular surgical, medical, or dental procedure.”

The passage I quoted from the book I’m reading is not about surgery, medicine or dentistry.

Assume the author knows the literal definition of the word and used it anyway.

Is there a name for this use? The first thing that comes to my mind is the word “metaphor” but I feel like there should/could be a more specific word describing this situation, especially because it’s a fairly common practice.


There's a small set of figurative rhetorical figures (intentional or not) that capture this idea of strange, inappropriate, inconsistent, or incorrect use of terms. It is headed by the term:

catachresis.

There's metalepsis, hyperbole, acyron, acyrologia (malapropism and separately cacozelia are subsets of this), even puns (paranomasia). (note that overuse of these Greek terms is called Graecism).

As to the use of 'instrumentarium' in your example, I don't consider that catachresis at all. It is a very legitimate use of very direct metaphor - an instrumentarium, though literally particular to surgical tools, is easily used metaphorically for -any- set of tools.

Are all non-literal uses metaphor? Figurative is the counterpart to literal, and one could make a case that any kind of non-literal use is a transfer or comparison to another situation. But that case is very thin.