syllepsis

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The Word of the Day for December 14 is: 

syllepsis   \suh-LEP-sis\   noun
     1 : the use of a word to modify or govern syntactically two 
or more words with only one of which it formally agrees in 
gender, number, or case
    *2 : the use of a word in the same grammatical relation to 
two adjacent words in the context with one literal and the other 
metaphorical

Example sentence:
     As an example of syllepsis, the teacher gave Dickens's "All 
the girls were in tears and white muslin."

Did you know?
     Charles Dickens was apparently a big fan of syllepses -- 
his "She went home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair" is 
another example of one. Sentences like these are humorously 
incongruous, but they're not grammatically 
incorrect. "Syllepsis" has another meaning, however -- 
illustrated by such sentences as "My sisters, and particularly 
my youngest sister, feel strongly about the matter" -- and in 
this sense it is something to be avoided. The "sisters" sentence 
has a problem; it has two subjects, and only one of them agrees 
with the verb "feel." The word "syllepsis" derives from the 
Greek "syllepsis," and ultimately from "syllambanein," 
meaning "to gather together." It has been used in English since 
at least 1550. 

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.