Antiprosopopoeia; or, Anti-Personification The opposite of Prosopopœia; Persons represented as inanimate things
An´-ti-pros-o´-po-pœ-ia . This is the name of the former figure with ἀντί (anti), opposite, prefixed. The name is given to this figure because it is the opposite of the-other: persons being represented as things, instead of things as persons.
2 Samuel 16:9. -“Then said Abishai the son of Zeruiah unto the king, Why should this dead dog curse thy lord, the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head.”
A dog does not curse; still less does a “dead dog”: but the vivid figure is eloquent, and stands for a whole paragraph which would be required to express literally all that the figure implies.