Antonomasia is a word derived from the Greek ἀντονομάζειν, which means, "to name differently." It is a rhetoric figure of speech, or metonymy, in which a concept is named after another closely related. Classical examples are, for example "King" for Elvis Presley, or "Fab Four" for The Beatles. In technology, "Xerox" for photocopying, "Big Blue" for IBM, "Google" for searching, but (surprisingly enough) not "iPhone" for smartphone. In the software industry, a similar phenomenon happens: "C++" for object orientation; "Java" for web apps; "Jenkins" for CI/CD; "Python" for machine learning; "Scrum" for Agile; and Kubernetes for DevOps.

While the phrase "Play it again, Sam" never occurs in the film Casablanca, the sentiment does. Sam is asked to play "As time goes by", a song about how some things remain the same despite the passage of time. The song was originally part of a 1931 Broadway musical, and perhaps ironically due to a musician's union strike when Casablanca was released, the studio were unable to release a new version of the song as a record. Instead, they re-issued the original version, recorded over a decade earlier.