A metaphor can be described as a literary ‘figure of speech’. Metaphors use a tangible thing, a story or anything else that exists as a way of representing something a little less tangible. Something like a quality or an idea can be represented through tangible means with the use of a metaphor. For instance, people may say that the ocean glistened like jewels, when in fact why they mean is that the ocean was reflecting the sun and emitting some rather attractive looking light.
A metaphor can also be used to represent any rhetorical figures of speak, which are able to achieve their effects by resemblance, comparison or just some kind of association. So for instance, in a broader sense, they would be antitheses, hyperboles, metonymy and similes. These are all kinds of metaphors that are used in the English language.
Aristotle famously used both this sense and the normal, current sense outlined above. With metaphors, however, specific interpretations are not given explicitly and are generally implied to an obvious level - much unlike an analogy.
There are numerous kinds of metaphors, too. A dead metaphor is a particular kind, whereby the sense of a transferred image is not there. For instance, ‘to gather what you have understood’ is a metaphor, as it uses a physical metaphor to describe understanding something. You are not gathering anything at all; you are just making a reference to understanding something. People do not visualise that action, so dead metaphors are known to just go unnoticed.
A mixed metaphor is another kind, which leaps from one identification to a second identification which is completely inconsistent with the first instance. Wikipedia offers this example: ‘If we can hit that bullseye then the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards…Checkmate’. This is a quote from Futurama.
A metaphor can also be used to represent any rhetorical figures of speak, which are able to achieve their effects by resemblance, comparison or just some kind of association. So for instance, in a broader sense, they would be antitheses, hyperboles, metonymy and similes. These are all kinds of metaphors that are used in the English language.
Aristotle famously used both this sense and the normal, current sense outlined above. With metaphors, however, specific interpretations are not given explicitly and are generally implied to an obvious level - much unlike an analogy.
There are numerous kinds of metaphors, too. A dead metaphor is a particular kind, whereby the sense of a transferred image is not there. For instance, ‘to gather what you have understood’ is a metaphor, as it uses a physical metaphor to describe understanding something. You are not gathering anything at all; you are just making a reference to understanding something. People do not visualise that action, so dead metaphors are known to just go unnoticed.
A mixed metaphor is another kind, which leaps from one identification to a second identification which is completely inconsistent with the first instance. Wikipedia offers this example: ‘If we can hit that bullseye then the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards…Checkmate’. This is a quote from Futurama.
