Why is "a black belt in Judo" a metonym?

Question

I ran into an answer which stated that black belt in the sentence, She's a black belt in Judo, is an example of metonymy.

Check out the figure of speech called "metonymy" It's where you replace the word for something by an attribute. […] It's just the same with "black belt" The object stands for the person who has earned it.

Clearly no one is physically a black belt, but I would consider the noun phrase to be an idiom, or an ellipsis for "She is [ranked] a black belt in judo” rather than a metonym (or synecdoche?); a belt that must be earned by someone who has reached a certain level of expertise. But is it metonymy when the subject of the sentence is a person and not the attribute itself?

I understand that metonymy is a figure of speech that represents a concept or an entity. Typical examples include: the Crown, the press, Downing Street–the home of the British Prime Minster, the White House–the home of the US President and the executive office of the President (EOP), and the capital city, Washington.

Note in the first example below, the subject is the thing or place representing an idea.

The White House has thrown its support behind a bill in Congress that would effectively ban TikTok, the social media app that is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, in the United States.
Source: npr
^{March 6, 2024}

Sometimes the capital city of a government is personified

The move to beef up port security comes against a backdrop of trade and geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing, despite US diplomatic delegations to China in recent months and a summit between Biden and President Xi Jinping in San Francisco last year.
Source: Financial Times
^{February 21, 2024}

Is it common to personify a black belt? In the aforementioned sentence, is black belt used metonymically?

The author of the answer cited this paper to support their answer: Metonymies we (don’t) translate by The case of complex metonymies by Mario Brdar & Rita Brdar-Szabó. In it, the authors provide this example of a “double-tiered metonymy”.

[Emphasis not mine]

(8) A lot of people used to think I was a black belt just because I was a professional athlete…

The authors also argue that the term turkey is a metonym.

(15) a. We did not always eat turkey for Christmas dinner.

In this instance the term turkey refers not to the species nor its whole carcass but to the meat of the bird. The authors classify this construction as “a subtype of WHOLE-FOR-PART metonymy,”

Just as in the black belt, the meat is not personified and it is not the subject of the sentence, it is the object. Does it make any difference?

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Question: Is black belt in this sentence “She's a black belt in judo” a metonym?

Answer 1

The definition "substitution by an attribute" may not be the most precise definition there is; the SOED has the following definition.

(SOED) metonymy 1 The substitution of a word denoting an attribute or adjunct of a thing for the thing itself.

The Wikipedia's definition is more encompassing.

(Wikipedia) Metonymy: a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept.

In the metonymies you collected, the connecting explanatory terms can be given as shown below.

• The Crown => symbolic object possessed by a monarchic ruler => ruler

• The press => organization for the diffusion of news in which are found reporters => reporters

• Downing Street => where is number 10 Downing Street => where the executive head lives => the executive head

• The White House => where the executive head lives => the executive head

• Washington => the seat of the US government => the US government

Let's first make clear that the figure of speech "personification" has nothing to do with this rhetorical turn.

(Wikipedia) Personification: attributing or applying human qualities to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.

… curtains danced in the wind … the moon smiled in the sky … his pen screeched on the page as if to deter him from going on …

In saying "she is a black belt", no human quality is conferred to a belt, that is, by saying so, the belt does not take on human characteristics. The idea of being that "she is" confers, and which induces spuriously this erroneous deduction, does not work both ways: the person is a belt but the belt is not a person (which is controversial, I must admit). It could be the opposite, as in "she is a vegetable", where the metaphor could be called "objectification" (but this term does not apply, and is defined differently in social philosophy; I believe that some other term is needed).

If "black belt" is considered in "she is a black belt" as were the proposed metonymies examined above this gives the following.

• black belt => symbolic object possessed by a judoka representing a level of fighting skill => a judoka with a black belt level

There is a striking similarity with "The Crown"; the objects in question are both contraptions that are worn by a person at one time or another and they both represent a place in a hierarchy. Also, the idea that the crown is personified cannot be given any credit. It would be difficult then to accept that you have no problem in seeing the metonymic process in the use of "The Crown" as meaning "the king" or "the queen" but that you should remain completely oblivious to that in "a black belt" as meaning "fighter who attained the rank of black belt".

I think that there is no doubt: the process in using "black belt" this way is certainly metonymic.

Note As suggested by user Mary-Lou A, the original poster, questions of idiomaticity pop up when one decides to use metonymic terms in place of the usual terms for which they appear to be synonyms—This is not properly the question but as an intriguing detail it is worth mentioning. Let's keep in mind that the "usual" term is not always simple; in fact the usual term for "black belt" can't be but an expression such as "judoka whose fighting ability has reached a technical maximum" or "in the martial art of judo a person who has been fully trained"; for "the Crown", the term "monarch" can be a replacement.

Some reflection shows that the "simple term" and its metonymic counterpart are not at the same level of idiomaticity. For example, while speaking to someone in an every-day conversation, you can say quite naturally "The Prime Minister has other things on his mind", but then you can't say "Downing Street has other things on his mind", not at all. Whereas "Prime Minister" is natural both in casual and more or less formal conversation "Downing Street" is not, and is more or less restricted to a discourse that is formal enough. Similarly, we wouldn't say "The black belt is in a difficult match", but we could say "A black belt would have made short work of this fight".

Answer 2

I ran into an answer that stated that black belt in the sentence, She's a black belt in Judo is an example of metonymy.

If it is, it is a poor and debatable metonym.

"A black belt" is a rank. It is no different from "He is a sergeant."