A strained or "misused" figure of speech, often a metaphor that grabs the wrong handle, creating an image that is vivid, unsettling, or technically improper (rhetoric). Catachresis flaunts its misfit. It works by not quite working.

From Greek katáchrēsis “misuse,” from kata- “against” + chrēsthai “to use.” Rhetoricians named it a fault; poets discovered it can also be a weapon.