Coffee Pot vs. Coffee Maker

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Office workers in Richmond, Virginia, are having a dispute: Is the appliance that makes the coffee a coffee pot or a coffee maker? This is a classic case of synecdoche, where a single part—like the pot that holds the hot coffee—is used to refer to the whole object. This is part of a complete episode.

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  • For more on Mr. Coffee (more historically, but with some attention to language), check out Rebecca Shrum’s “Selling Mr. Coffee: Design, Gender, and the Branding of a Kitchen Appliance” from _WInterthur Portfolio_ (Winter 2012): 271-98.

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