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If possible, I would like to talk about using metaphoricals in writing.
I put up a webpage with 17 tips. I don't know if that can help start discussion. http://emmasohan.com/cb/Metaphorical_advice.htm . (I will edit this 10 times, so I don't really need advice on writing style.)
I have that there are four steps.
1. Realizing a need. I wish I had more on this. 2. Thinking of the metaphorical. This is what everyone concentrates on, but I don't know if there is much to say. 3. Formatting the metaphorical. There are so many ways to write a metaphorical, and I think people tend to overuse the standard simile form. 4. Checking it. I have no fondness for metaphoricals which create mood but don't describe.
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Figurative expression's social function is expression of moral aptitude, in the forms of irony, satire, and sarcasm: respectively, eirônia, satis (from satura, a dish of mixed, resonant, united, and apt ingredients; enough, Latin), and sarcasmus figures and schemes (singular instances and extended circumstances). Humans are social beings and, therefore, want for public and social participation, otherwise, shunned and alienated, which way goes madness, albeit resistant to John Locke's natural law theories of social-moral acceptance principles. Therein, too, is the function of "metaphoricals" and etc., and those figures, schemes, and schemas' true imports and methods and founts.
A figurative expression study benefits from reduction of thoughts and principles to writing and sharing, at the least for appreciation enhancement. For that outcome, the essay is a strong and noteworthy effort.
One aspect of figurative expression worth note is many or most people acquire rhetoric skills only through osmotic absorption and apply those more so intuitively than deliberatively by design and consequent inaptness and awkwardness. Part of why is a common belief that deliberative processes weaken expression and hamper creativity. Aside from convenient habits' temptations to evade difficulty, an otherwise valid presupposition.
However, true rhetorical expression mastery appears as leisurely easy and apt as an off-the-cuff roll of expression from the tongue, appears intuitive and casual and is anything but, is a result of an impassioned and difficult process of years or decades of study and hardened determination to grow beyond mere intuitive expression and stilted designs. Mastery consumes effort and time.
"Metaphorical advice" evinces the above and intent for further appreciation of rhetoric and figurative expression, worth the midnight candle burnt and furthers rhetorical skills and moral aptitude, soon or late; however, a degree of prudent review is wanted for validation at the least, prior to publication debut, or peer review from competent and open-minded rhetoricians.
The essay entails the several venues of scholastic literary analysis, method analysis, in the main: extant knowledge recited, extant knowledge freshly approached and organized, extant knowledge freshly built upon, and fresh knowledge, the latter the more difficult of the lot and most resistant to wanted consensus agreement, consequently, wants competent peer review, at the least to mitigate self-embarrassment and personal attacks from the feral and brutal online public.
I do my best to give "advice" that doesn't interfere with creativity. For example, "10. Alter the well-known cliche" doesn't tell them how to actually alter it. There's a suggestion to make it more accurate, but even that's just a possibility.
I'm not sure what a peer group would be. Obviously, it's easy to find people who list and describe types. I do that too. But who is looking at modern literature and giving advice to writers?
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Rhetorical principles that suit "Alter the well-known cliché" include invention and imitation, foremost. Accuracy is less of a guidance for rhetorical beauty, truth, and goodness than aptness, even ironic inaptness is a potential type of aptness. True irony, not the superficial and sarcastic expressions that X-gens and Millennials pose about malappropriated culture artifacts, traditions, and customs.
How then to alter cliché for lively and vivid freshness? Irony, moral aptitude, which can be sarcastic, often is, context and texture wrap for which an invention and imitation piece could then be no other expression, and judiciously pile on other tropes and schemes as needed to fulfill an intent: metalepsis, paradox, oxymoron, synecdoche, metonymy, repetition, substitution, amplification, allegory, assonance, consonance, alliteration for accentual emphasis, zeugma, paradiastole, etc.
For example, the cliché and idiom from the essay, "Take it with a grain of salt." First, what's the rhetorical situation? Advice to be skeptical though not totally deny the "it" advice. Mindful of practical irony's advice withheld for wisdom's growth and trial and error's sakes. What are the pivotal parts of speech -- most significant? A verb usually. "Take." The core allusion and comparison is a "grain of salt," a small (tiny, minuscule, minute, etc., an understatement) quantity of an everyday staple. (Is advice an everyday staple!? Uh-huh; volubly given, taken, imposed, and rarely received.) Otherwise, an empty pronoun "it," that is, a syntactical epithet, and a preposition particle "with." Each and all subject to abundant and apt replacement potentials.
Which figures of speech suit the subject matter, the occasion (kairos), and the audience (rhetorical decorum)? Are companion appeal principles of pathos (emotion), ethos (credibility), and logos (logic) suited to the occasion? What about alternative interpretations or similar sayings? Is "A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down" an apt allusive comparison? How about merge the two sayings for apt effect (metalepsis)? Or overstatement? Or both and more?
Then compose a few or a hundred or more trial sentences or phrases that express the intent, mentally or in writing. This is the Renaissance rhetorician Desiderius Erasmus' De Copia (of abundance) exercise, and which Gideon Burton summarizes, at Silva Rhetoricae "Copia": http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Pedagogy/Copia.htm and Burton's Copia guide: http://burton.byu.edu/Composition/CopiaGuide.pdf (both of which tolerate, even encourage responsible citation and attribution, and are permissible, generally, for Fair Use doctrine purposes).
"Take it with a grain of salt" Take it with a ton of salt. Take advice from an eyedropper, skepticism from a sledge hammer. Accept advice by a measure of grace, wary nonetheless of fools suffered too easily. Believe it on a blue moon. Take a grain of salt with a gallon of prudence's tincture. Advice is but an iota of wisdom shared and a library of folly and hidden agendas. Swallow advice as if the substance consumed is unknown poison or nectar, caustic or ambrosia, vitriol or precious aqua vitae.
Ad nauseam and ad infinitum, near infinite possibilities derived from everyday advice about everyday advice.
Peer review is subject-matter experts' reviews of the validity of scholastic submissions intended for publication. Scholastic-subject publishers maintain lists of peer reviewers.
"But who is looking at modern literature and giving advice to writers?" A veritable cornucopia of advisors across the culture, from writers writing about writing to university scholars, pedagogues, literature analysts, grammarians, narratologists, linguisticians, semioticians, semanticians, rhetoricians, etc., to everyday folk who happen to be well-versed about an array of topics. Post an article about "Metaphoricals" at Wikipedia and see them scurry from out of the bit and byte fretwork.
The general question I was concerned with was how writers use a second "thing" to help describe a first. It would be really nice to have a word to describe those as a whole. So I chose "metaphoricals". That would be similes and metaphors (which are about the same for most writing discussion purposes), allusions, and, depending on how you want to categorize, allegories, analogies, lexaphors, and metaphors by conjunction.
But not, for example, other figurative expressions like hyperbole. Or all rhetorical devices.
Anyway, thanks for visiting, and thanks for the feedback. If I have to explain my website here, something's going wrong at my website, right?
Added: Ugh, I just looked at the first page. Right, it was ugly.
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The word "trope" is rhetoricians' label for allusive comparison, "Reference to One Thing as Another," that is, "how writers use a second 'thing' to help describe a first": metaphor, simile, synecdoche, metonymy, personification; and "Wordplay and Puns," "Substitutions," "Overstatement/Understatement," and "Semantic Inversions." From "Figures of Speech: Tropes," "Trope: An artful deviation from the ordinary or principal signification of a word." (Gideon Burton, Silva Rhetoricae, rhetoric.byu.edu)
Mass culture would label idiom and cliché, any tired, trite, worn-out, artless visual, aural, olfactoral, gustatoral, emotional, or written sensation, thought, reflection, motif, theme, word, phrase, entire narrative artifact, or saying trope, too, a neutral term made dysphemism (dysphemismus, recent coined transliterations of euphemism and euphemismus, 1884) and made trite by the very wearied and diluted and confused processes the use sarcastically satirizes, a situational irony (LiteraryDevices.net).
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I restricted the "essay" to when a second thing was used to DESCRIBE a first. Euphemism isn't included, because it's using a second thing to REFER to (or indicate) a first. So I didn't include synecdoche and mentioned hyperbole only because it interacts with metaphoricals.
That seems to be a logical category from the standpoint of writing. It focuses on a function -- how do we describe things?
Trope seems to have drifted in meaning. Is that what you were saying? From Google:
"A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. The word trope has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works."
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quote:That would be similes and metaphors (which are about the same for most writing discussion purposes),
Pardon? They are not comparable. A simile equates the similarity between one thing, or experience, and another. Eg. His hand was as cold and clammy as a three day old dead fish. A metaphor is sooooo much more complex; it uses a new construct to explore something we all know.
Consider Sauron's ring in LotR. It is well known as a metaphor, but for what? Greed, the constant search for power and control? No one seems to know and, as a metaphor, I think that's the best kind. The metaphorical power of the ring is unique to each reader, just as the ring is to each 'Bearer'.
Let's look at another pop culture metaphor, the mysterious stranger in westerns like Shane or The Man With No Name. These characters are metaphors, but for what, justice, revenge? The choice is yours. Phil.
[ October 25, 2018, 08:26 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
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Mass culture would dilute and broaden word use: diction. Subject-matter discourse groups use words and denotations specific to their subjects. Rhetoric and rhetoricians, for example, use terms and define and maintain those by consensus agreement, most of which emerged twenty-five or so hundred years ago in Athens, later in Rome, Byzantium, across Renaissance Europe, to Britain, its far-flung Commonwealth, and to the U.S. Rhetoric is as much part of Western civilization's foundation and culture as representative democracy is.
Aside from beauty, truth, and goodness, rhetorical aptness also includes concision. There, dictionaries miss adequate definition of the word: brief; precision is also part of the word's full denotation, its etymology origin from a "precise cut," a hyponym companion of incision. Hyponym: a word set of similar relations by hierarchy organization. Hypernym, a top level category of word sets. For example, cuts; hyponyms thereof: concision (archaic), incision, recision, etc. Cut is also itself a hyponym of hypernym wounds and other word hierarchies. This is the linguistics basis for Brandon Sanderson's Pyramid of Abstraction and resembles taxonomy hierarchies. Example: Animal, mammal, canivore, canine, dog, female, puppy, collie, toy collie.
"Trope," "metaphor," etc., situate similarly. Trope is a hyponym of rhetorical figures of speech and of hypernym rhetoric. Metaphor is a hyponym of hypernym trope.
Outside of rhetoric discourse and consensus groups, which maintain concision of rhetoric terms, rhetorical terms do drift, as many words do in mass culture. Living languages are ever alive if they morph and mutate. Dead languages die due to hidebound efforts to prevent metamorphic and mutant evolution: classic Latin and Greek, for examples.
Yet rhetoric, itself a mutated word denotation, is now a dysphemism among mass culture, the term a four-letter word used to insult and injure and offend, often for governmental politics culture.
"Literary tropes" is an inconcise term, neither brief nor precise, is less specific than intended, overbroad, and imprecise. Topos is the concise word, though very unfamiliar to most, language scholars included, and that then defeats the rhetorical purpose of decorum's "Suit words to subject matter, and each to the other, to the occasion, and to the audience." Plus, defuses ethos, logos, and inverts pathos from appeal to alienation. "Trope" itself is unfamiliar to many and its mass culture uses likewise inconcise.
"Metaphor" has entailed the same processes of metamorphosis and mutation and inconcision, due in part to unsophisticated expression designed to appear sophisticated and fails, and also in part sloth's shorthand abbreviation. The term's concise usage is as given above, and furthermore -- here, Webster's is somewhat concise -- "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase _literally_ denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them". Underscores added. Even "literally" therein is a concise usage, to mean of a literary and actual sense. Not the mass culture uses to mean "actually," "really," "virtually" without the literary sense, nor used for an empty emotional intensifier.
Silva Rhetoricae's definition: "A comparison made by referring to one thing as another." Too brief and imprecise by far.
Now "Metaphoricals"? Inconcise. The root noun is "metaphor," from which the adjective form derives: "metaphoric," of a metaphor's likeness from the -ic suffix. "Metaphorical" is itself an adjective form, back formation from adverb "metaphorically." "Metaphoricals" noun usage is both imprecise and overlong -- two syllables more than uncounted noun "metaphor." Long especially due to mass culture uses the root term metaphor as a generic catchall for all figurative language and is more familiar with the term than "metaphoricals."
Otherwise, if suited to rhetoric discourse groups, the term "metaphoricals" is too imprecise. Creative writers stand legs in both realms: mass culture and rhetoricians. A self-choice of which denotation or connotation to use is informed by decorum's suit words and subject matter to the occasion and to the audience. Mass culture or rhetoric discourse groups? Persuasive appeals would span both.
A simple expedient of brief and precise term definition spans both, plus, for strongest appeal effect, expresses commentary about the disparities of language; that is, without deprecation or derogation, satirically implies that "metaphor" means several concise and inconcise concepts to the audience, to several culture groups, and that the disparity expresses that effective communication is fraught with complexity and complication.
The commentary, or message: language challenges humans to say what they mean, mean what they say, and too often fail (obverse of H. P. Grice's Cooperation Principle, Gricean maxims, suit quantity, quality, relevance, and mannerism to decorum). Moral: choose words wisely, concisely (diligence, virtue; sloth, vice). This type of moral aptitude commentary subtext adds significant appeal to an otherwise dreary topic explication.
"A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. The word trope has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works."
Oh my, inconcise, an overbroad mass-culture social network connotation. Neither brief nor precise. A "literary trope" is not a trope, is a topos. "Literary trope," as used by literature scholars, analytical readers and writers thereof, is the definition of "topos": "a traditional or conventional literary or rhetorical theme or topic" (Webster's). Not devices, not tropes; rather, recurrent motifs and themes, such as an individual and Nature, otherwise, the precise form of the imprecise Man versus Nature generic theme, and symbolism, allegory, imagery, sensation, emotion, conversation, etc., for examples.
"Literary device" is itself inconcise. "Device" means category divisions in that sense, hierarchy, that is, from generic terms to specific terms and crossovers, and categorized accordingly, not a scattershot blast of hypernymys and hyponyms only listed alphabetically. Rhetorical device, likewise.
Rather, rhetoric's aptness, also, aligns and organizes by a spectrum of virtue or vice, rhetorical vice or virtue, aptness of beauty, truth, goodness, and concision. "Rhetorical device" derives in part from the word vice, and further, in part, from that figures of speech are poetic equipment of expression. In the sense that a device is an equipment, "a mechanical device." However, aptness is an aesthetic modality rather than a mechanical device, and the overall function of rhetoric is its synonym persuasion aesthetic, not manipulation nor imposition; persuasion, transformative emotional appeal persuasions at the least.
Now, this has been long, not brief, thus inconcise. Or has the rhetorical situation purpose been apt? If a rhetorical intent wants inconcision, say, lengthiness, that signals a subtext presence, probably subliminal, too. This is Socratic irony's at times recursive, at times discursive, at times digressive, always practical irony design, which, as Grumpy old guy observes, self-choice is paramount, though if the self be accepted, not rejected, some attention is due to the occasion, the audience, and to consensus agreement. After all, rhetoric, like grammar, is an implicit social contract formed and agreed to by consensus, not imposed by one, singular authority.
Any search for "metaphor versus simile" is probably going to yield a definition like mine. For example: "While both similes and metaphors are used to make comparisons, the difference between similes and metaphors comes down to a word. Similes use the words like or as to compare things—“Life is like a box of chocolates.” In contrast, metaphors directly state a comparison—“Love is a battlefield.”
But to me, that fits symbol. (extrinsic perhaps can do better.)
So, I'm pretty sure I'm following the standard usage of metaphor. And if you don't want to call this a metaphor
2. This therapy is a pin in his wound.
Call it what you want and the rest of the page still works fine, such as that being the same meaning as the corresponding phrase using "like".
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Hi extrinsic. Are you saying that there is someplace where metaphor and simile have definitions, and eveyone has agreed, and people argued about them?
I just found way too many definitional problems. For example
Superman is as fast as a speeding bullet Superman is faster than a speeding bullet.
I can say more if there really is some definition of these. I ended up drawing my own lines but not being particularly happy with that.
(And of course wanting to avoid all definitional issues for advice to writers, who will not care about my agonies.)
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Simultaneous agreement and argument about metaphor and simile, and that metaphoric applies to both, though only metaphor, per se, is legion across mass culture, well-defined among rhetoricians and consensus agreed each generation and not argued.
The places where figurative expression denotations live include dictionaries, encyclopedias, literary analyses, textbooks, libraries, online equivalents, classrooms, and archives, etc. Connotative definitions creep into the same places, in the main, though, float around and from among mass culture.
"Superman is as fast as a speeding bullet."
Simile, incontrovertible, contains comparative adverb "as," modifies "fast," and correlative conjunction "as," "as [fast] as." Contains comparatives "like" or "as." Simile tested: //Superman is as like a speeding bullet.//
"Superman is faster than a speeding bullet."
Simile, subject to mass culture dissent, incontrovertible for rhetoricians, use of a comparative adjective "faster" and transitional preposition "than."
//Superman is a speeding bullet.//
Incontrovertible metaphor, though inapt. The to be verb "is" is static voice, state of being stasis, Superman is not always a speeding bullet, logically false, logos flaw, and misses occasion for more significant, finite, and definite verbal metaphor use, say, related to firearm and rocket ballistics:
//Superman shot off -- a Mach 1 projectile -- at the speed of sound, trailed a sonic boom.//
Yet mass culture dissenters would argue each is metaphoric, metaphorical even, metaphor-like figurative expression, which could, arguably, include any and all of thousands of rhetoric figures, tropes, schemes, principles, and canons.
"(And of course wanting to avoid all definitional issues for advice to writers, who will not care about my agonies.)"
Those agonies and their dramatic movement expression are ripe for a creative personal essay, and apt and greatest for reader-effect social appeal, the instructional content second to the prime motivator of grapples with and tames, at the bittersweet end, figurative expression's moral aptitude challenges and contests.
The site page essay https://www.kibin.com/essay-examples/an-analysis-of-metaphors-in-the-old-man-and-the-sea-by-ernest-hemingway-MLed0uUq is a sample of a plagiarism mill's products, rife with errors and cheats. The Hemingway cites are neither metaphor nor symbol, rather, are topos and allegory -- metaphoric, maybe. A grade for the paper, if submitted for a class assignment, would be an F, due to egregious plagiarism, and warrant student expulsion; otherwise, if original work of the student submitter, a C- or D+.
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Hi. First, I think in response to Phil, I added my definition of my use of "metaphoricals": "describing one thing using a second thing". I would list Simile, metaphor, allegory, allusion, analogy, metaphor-by-conjunction, and lexaphors. SHould I have just made up a word like "phoricals"? I just want to communicate about how to write better.
Second. What is the rhetoricians definition of simile and metaphor? And how do they deal with: Superman is faster than 300 MPH. John is faster than Jack.
What is the definition of metaphoric? I'm guessing you don't want me using the internet for that. If that's an adjective for metaphors and similes, can I call them metaphorics?
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"Metaphoricals" and "metaphorics" are, respectively, a noun root made an adjective made an adverb made a noun, and a noun made an adjective made a noun. Why repeat and perpetuate and propagate mass culture's convenient meaning abbreviation, agglomeration, dilution, obtuseness, and inconcision? Word coins have a time and place, though face rigorous scrutiny and resistance or denial. Why not instead use time-honored terms, definitions, and explanations that are concise, distinct, and robust, albeit, personal paraphrases expressed in the self's own words?
The declared purpose of the expository essay is about how to write better. That is an opposite of convenience, abbreviation, agglomeration, dilution, obtuseness, and inconcision, rather, diligence, detail, distinction, clarity, focus, strength, and concision are wanted, for expository essays and creative expression.
"Metaphoricals," "metaphorics," "metaphor-by-conjunction," and "lexaphor" are coins that diminish diligence, strength, clarity, focus, and concision, etc. (See Strunk and White's style guide for "word inventions," also discussed in The Poetics of Aristotle.)
Rhetoricians define simile and metaphor, etc., much like mass culture, in that personal meanings and paraphrases of primary or original sources vary widely, though are more concise, clear, and focused than mass culture's. Webster's definitions are concise for those two terms; online dictionaries and other online references are inconcise, as are most of social media-centric definitions and priorities; Gideon Burton's, too concise to be useful. See Webster's, though it, too, can fall short at times.
A personal and effective approach, rather, investigates several sources, contrasts and compares the several, analyzes and synthesizes, and develops and realizes a personal definition that is valid, concise, comprehensive, strong, clear, and focused.
For example, a literature form, the "picaresque," William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy's favored form aesthetic. Webster's: "of or relating to rogues or rascals; also : of, relating to, suggesting or being a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a usually roguish protagonist" (italics part of original). Incomplete and inconcise. Event and character descriptions, entails no setting, nor the satire function of picaresque, some moral aptitude, though misses a full realization.
See Wikipedia, other reliable and even unreliable reference sources, compare and contrast those and the Webster's definition of the form to similar forms, noir, for example, read Faulkner and McCarthy, other picaresque narratives, analyze and synthesize, expand the definition, cut superfluous content, adjust again for concision (rinse and repeat), etc., arrive at a full realization of the form, for example, picaresque: Episodic adventures of a roguish agonist in vice and folly-ridden social settings.
"Superman is faster than 300 MPH. John is faster than Jack."
No rhetoric at all within each, are direct comparisons, no allusions of one thing to another, direct or indirect.
"What is the definition of metaphoric? I'm guessing you don't want me using the internet for that. If that's an adjective for metaphors and similes, can I call them metaphorics?"
"Metaphoric," its mass culture use, means all of figurative expression, any and all of it, (Wilbur's metaphorics span all of Creation, generic, noun); its narrowest connotation is metaphor-like: metaphor, simile, synecdoche, metonymy, or personification, period, (Martha gushed metaphoric innuendoes, generic, adjective). Its narrowest denotation is for the adjective form of the explicit noun metaphor that modifies a noun. The proverb, Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, contains metaphoric words.
Do what you will, use Internet references as you will, wary of confusion, inconcision, and outright error, distrust many, though a few gems among the screed, for sure, all useful for contrastive comparison analyses, syntheses, and self-selection realization purposes and outcomes. Take the pulse of the consensus factions, and self-determine what your meanings and uses are that span yet beat the many hearts.
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I don't know, extrinsic. One common website pretty much has the mass culture definition:
While both similes and metaphors are used to make comparisons, the difference between similes and metaphors comes down to a word. Similes use the words like or as to compare things—“Life is like a box of chocolates.” In contrast, metaphors directly state a comparison—“Love is a battlefield.”
I just looked up Webster's definition of metaphor, which describes lexaphor fairly well, but doesn't seem to include the above as a metaphor.
You seem almost be saying that there is a correct definition but no one in mass culture will know it. That makes it not very useful for the purposes of communication.
Here's a totally different definition:
The terms metaphor and simile are slung around as if they meant exactly the same thing.
A simile is a metaphor, but not all metaphors are similes.
Metaphor is the broader term. In a literary sense metaphor is a rhetorical device that transfers the sense or aspects of one word to another. For example:
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. — “The Highwayman,” Alfred Noyes
Now simile has become a subset of metaphor.
James Wood says "every metaphor or simile is a little explosion of fiction within the larger fiction of the novel or story." That implies that similes are not metaphors. And "Superman is faster than a speeding bullet is not intended as figurative or false (within the larger fiction of the story), so it would not be a simile by his "definition".
One problem is that the difference between metaphors and similes USING THE FIRST EXAMPLE is important and lets me say the metaphors are more powerful than the corresponding simile.
However, the two are so similar I spend most of my time wanting to talk about both, so I need a word for both. And it doesn't exist, or that word is also metaphor, giving "metaphor" two different definitions.
Thanks for the patience to discuss this with me, I do appreciate that. I do want to understand things.
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posted
My point about mass culture is the use of the broadest connotation of words and definitions, if any, prevails therein, not that mass culture doesn't know, though many don't know the true meanings of words they use. Connotation is cultural inferences of implicit meaning. Denotation is words' explicit meanings.
Words and meanings, like metaphor, entail a use and understanding hierarchy, from broadest connotation to narrowest denotation and generic to precise and under-realized to full realization. Not correct or proper usage, per se, more so imprecise and implicit to precise and explicit and anywhere between, or outside a word's domain, too, even if individual variants occur.
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For me, as a writer, precision of language is paramount. Emma, it is quite likely you may never accept my definitions of simile and metaphor, but that’s not important. What is important is that I am consistent in the application of my own definitions in my own writing. To restate those definitions, and to provide a visual representation of how they work, consider this: A simile is a one off, throw away line, meant only to demonstrate how artful you may be in turning a commonplace phrase into a delightful quip; a self-indulgent exercise in narcissism in my opinion. One I try and avoid at all costs. On the other hand, a metaphor is a long enduring idea, even a manifestation of an abstract concept; be it moral, philosophical, emotional, metaphysical etc., etc..
The visual representation of this difference in application? If you have ever seen Luc Besson’s movie Lucy then you may already know what I’m about to say; if not, let me explain.
Lucy is forced into delivering a briefcase full of drugs to a Tong boss. The live action is rapidly inter-cut with imagery of prey animals in the process of being stalked by predators (cheetah), chased then killed. A powerful use of imagery to get you into the emotional situation of the character, Lucy. I equate these scenes as visual similes; there is a direct comparison between what we see and what Lucy feels. Later, near the end of the movie, as Lucy is almost at the height of her power, her police companion has a moment of doubt about his usefulness to her. The conversation goes like this:
“I’m not sure I can be of any help for you.” Lucy replies, “Yes you are.” “What for?” Lucy kisses him; eyes wide open. “A reminder. Shall we go?”
Those two words--a reminder; to me that’s a metaphor. Lucy needs to be reminded she is still human no matter what she’s becoming and what she’s capable of.
posted
This discussion is, from one perspective, strange. One of my tips I suspect might be revolutionary. I am pretty sure it is not popular. (When you are using metaphoricals for mood, have them also describe.)
We are talking about the standard topics, which most writers would not care about: What are the labels for rhetorical devices and how should they be defined and those terms used? Phil, for example, cares about his definition of metaphor but no one else's. And that doesn't hurt his writing a bit.
Here is advice from a website
"Metaphors can make your words come to life."
[This is a metaphor. The mood is great! Bring your words to life! I have no idea what that actually means, and I have thought a lot about what it could possibly mean to bring characters to life. So this would make my list of bad metaphors.]
Continuing: "Often, you can use a metaphor to make your subject more relatable to the reader or to make a complex thought easier to understand. They can also be a tremendous help when you want to enhance your writing with imagery."
[You should want to write well. That should be the goal. Why should you want to enhance your writing with imagery? It doesn't say, right? I list Hemingway and Card as writing two great books that are low in metaphoricals.]
Oh, ha ha, another website: "Simile and metaphor are two of the most commonly known literary devices. Many others add depth, meaning, and color to your writing and make it come alive."
Depth! Everyone wants depth! Color! Instead of black-and-white, everyone knows color is more exciting.
That's how people write ads.
Of course, there is a question of what advice to writers should look like. Yesterday, one moment in a scene seemed to need just a little more, and the phrase "the straw that broke the camel's back" came to mind, and I shrugged off the cliche without a thought, then I couldn't think of anything else.
And then I remembered my own advice for what to do when you want to use a cliche. It worked fine. So, my website contains the trigger the writer needs to remember and use the advice. Also, I wrote that into my scene using exactly the advice from my website (although I would have done that naturally).
That's not a novel technique -- I have seen more than one author use it. I just never saw anyone say it.
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"Metaphors can make your writing come to life." is, indeed, a metaphor, though lackluster, indeed. That is a situational irony, an incongruence between intent and outcome from which an observer obtains a measure of delight. The dead-common saying is lifeless due to the predicate "can make" lacks figurative expression and emphasis. Verbal metaphor is wanted. As is, the sole metaphor is the subjective case object phrase of the predicate, "your writing come to life."
Second person? Personal pronouns are unsuited for impersonal formal composition and how-to and instruction manual generally, implied second person maybe, though the saying itself doesn't support second person, polite imperative mood. Subjunctive mood overall that is a conditional and hedge expression, "can make"? Ostensibly, all "your writing," though for metaphor, is less suited to formal composition than for prose. Yet the saying is about, presumably, performance genre composition: prose, poetry, script. The saying is an off-the-cuff convenient expression, cliché and idiom, tired, trite, worn out, that wants further consideration, perhaps a copia exercise. First, what is the rhetorical situation?
Our host Orson Scott Card and Hemingway's figurative expression evince such further considerations. Their works' figurative expression entails ample yet subtle metaphor and simile, plus many other less-known figures, is more complex and covert than simple and overt.
The motion picture Lucy conversation Grumpy old guy cites is metaphor yet entails profound and sublime context and texture about more than Lucy herself, also about Pierre, the immediate situation of the scene, its antecedent and subsequent scenes, the overall drama and movement, and the overall theme and moral aptitude message. A unifier and unified facet of the overall allegory. Exquisite.
Single concise expressions of that mannerism propel vivid and lively life into any narrative, though many or most receivers misapprehend or miss altogether those expressions and enjoy those nonetheless, unaware of why.
Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" entails numerous figures, a simile title that refers to a metaphor and a proverb for starts. The story, an allegory, with instances of and extended ennoia, periphrasis, paralepsis, meiosis, to name a few. Hemingway's writing evinces a deft and uncommon rhetoric skill, more deliberate design than intuitive happenstance derived from osmotic social absorption, yet an ease that is natural, everyday expression, unforced, and aptly suited to his works.
Card similarly uses rhetoric, no overt, clumsy, forced, inapt expression, yet an ease of expression, and easily overlooked yet enjoyed nonetheless.
More effort and quality to artful expression than simile and metaphor and convenient habit, happenstance intuitive rhetoric usage. Intuitive uses call undue attention, due to their awkwardness and unnatural force or trite, tired, worn out, and everyday-common conversation mannerisms, and that impede willing suspension of disbelief, that compromises authentication of a narrative, for one.
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Suddenly a pain stabbed through him like a needle. Even as his secret enemy called him names, the method of delivery praised him. Didn't work, so erase the experiment.
Those are the metaphoricals I could find in the first (short) chapter in Ender's Game, ignoring dialogue. And using my definition.
From the first page of another book:
And hell was sitting four rows back. Maybe it was just purgatory. like a thief sneaking off in the dead of night. And if my life wasn't enough in the toilet seated four rows in front of a guy who looked like Sasquatch and was snoring like a bear in a cave Three quarters of the plane was now desperately drunk
Quite a contrast, right?
I think a metaphor/simile can pull the reader out of the story. I mean, there is no bear. No toilet.
Card's mostly using what I call lexaphors, which are going to be only mildly disruptive. Despite the advice to use metaphors to add life, his writing has all the life, color, and depth anyone would want.
I assume rhetorical devices include all writing techniques. Of course Card has a lot of those. I use that short chapter for two good examples in my grammar book. I'm trying to make a point about metaphoricals -- using one thing to help describe another.
The other book is an extreme, but I think I can find a lot of them.
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One simile, no metaphors in the first example set, not much, if any, other figures either.
A few more similes in the second set, maybe metaphors, though some are dubious. If "Hell" and "Purgatory" are capital case, then metaphor, otherwise, generic idioms. Likewise, "in the toilet" is an idiom.
Inapt metaphor or simile, inapt figurative expression overall, does disrupt readers. However, what is inapt to one reader category is sublime to another, are matters of abstract cognitive aptitude and amount, quality, relevance, and mannerism of figurative encounter experience.
Who is the target audience of the essay? Readers who would be published writers and confused by reference to all figurative language as metaphoric, confused by metaphor and simile combined? How about alienated by prior knowledge the two figures are distinct, in some ways mutually exclusive of each other? Or inexperienced writers who would propagate a misconception? Likewise "rhetorical device"? A rhetorical figure, a figure of expression, a figure of speech, or, shortest handed, a figure, once the intended context of the abbreviated term is established first.
Another consideration for "lexaphor": inapt that the prefix is "lex." That prefix entails different significations, Latin lex means law; Greek lex means word. The lowercase A also is problematic, a feminine inflective for both languages, is neither masculine nor feminine for either language, is neutral, takes a neuter lowercase I inflective for both. //Lexiphor// is the more apt, though an invented coin sure to baffle many, most, or all.
"-phor" derives from a Greek word for verb to bear, later, verb to transfer, specifically, to bear or transfer spots or sugar or wax frosts that appear as decorative on ripening fruits and vegetables as if by magic, due to fey folk, dryads, who dine thereon. "Meta-" from Greek means among, with, after; metaphor: among, with, after to bear, to transfer.
Lexaphor? Law to bear or to transfer? Word to bear or to transfer? Feminine each? Metaphor itself transfers word significations, simile does not, which distinguishes and divides metaphor from simile, also; synecdoche, metonymy, and personification bear or transfer "ornamented" expression as well.
A proverb, for example: "Little pitchers have big ears." Metaphor, simile, synecdoche, metonymy, or personification? Metaphor, synecdoche, and personification, synecdoche foremost: a part stands for, transfers from a whole. (The first ever figurative expression I encountered at oh so young a precocious age, used then for implied command to shut up about adult topics when I ventured into earshot, though understood the proverb nonetheless, and contributed to a lifelong passion for and pursuit of figurative expression.)
"Wife beater," a contemporary culture label for an undergarment type, the sleeveless, collarless, neck-less, white cotton chemise-type undershirt much worn for an outerwear shirt by crude men early to mid twentieth century or so, now most any simple undershirt-type t-shirt worn as outerwear. Metaphor, simile, synecdoche, metonymy, or personification? All except for simile; metonymy foremost: an attribute stands for, transfers from a whole.
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From where I sit (my writing studio), the first example is indeed a simile; accented by the inclusion of the word ‘like’. Examples two and three are simply narrative statements of dubious value without character or context. Of the second set of six, the first one is a figurative statement, the second, is, by my reading, a question rather than a statement, the third is the end of a simile, again highlighted by the use of the word ‘like’, four is simply a rhetorical question without the grammatical mark, the fifth is a mixed simile (is he a Sasquatch or a bear?) and the last is a statement of opinion.
As far as I’m concerned, not a metaphor in sight.
Which brings me to the matter of giving advice. I am reminded of a saying contained in LotR, and paraphrased by myself here and now, “Ask not the Elves for advice, for they will answer both yea and nay.”
I once had a blog and, as is the want of bloggers, I felt empowered to cast my (supposed) wisdom upon the waters of the Internet. My focus was on various structural and mechanical aspects of the writer’s craft and I expounded on what I considered were my well reasoned, erudite and sagacious thoughts upon many subjects. Time passed, interest waned and I moved on from such childish pursuits. Four years after my last blog post I had occasion to seek out and re-read those blog posts stored in my archives. Hmmmm?
Talk about an enlightening experience.
What a pompous ass I was. I chuckled long and hard over my presumption, my lack of real understanding and my naivete. I now have only one piece of advice for new and emerging writers: Read the treatises of universally acknowledged Masters of the craft, practice incorporating their wisdom using your own manner and style within your own works over and over again until you understand their every nuance. And, finally, you can never learn everything you need to know; all you can do is try. A case in point, I read Aristotle’s Poetics at least four times a year, and I still find some new pearl of wisdom, some new connection, every time.
Phil.
PS: You might also want to try searching google scholar for information rather than just your bog standard search engine. Apparently most of the pages on google scholar are claimed by Google to be academically ‘published’, and quite a number peer reviewed.
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Hi Phil. I am pretty cautious about my advice. Is there some advice that I might be embarrassed about?
So much of it seems to common-sense once I say it. Check your metaphors/similes. Try to continue them, try to control them. Don't use a figurative expression if your reader is liable to see it as literal.
The only controversial one I know of is "Even Metaphors for Mood Should Describe." I'm surprised I said it that strongly, but I can't imagine changing my mind. And I really made it clear that it was MY opinion, because I said earlier that people could write them and have a lot of company.
So
His eyes were the color of the sea.
Good advice -- check that. If you don't find any problems, okay. There's a trap, which I try to explain to help people find problems, and here the color of the sea ranges from slate gray to bright aquamarine. So that doesn't say as much about eye color as one might assume. But if the author still wants to use it, that's the authors intelligent choice.
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Free speech, free will, freedom, liberty, each and all, are as much a responsibility as a right and as a privilege. Considerations and contentions arise when the inalienable human right is taken without due consideration of the responsibilities entailed.
Though a proverb-like platitude, that is a piece of wisdom from the ages, and the overall message and moral of Freedom, Jonathan Franzen, 2010, among other narratives.
Similar to other successful writers and masters of figurative expression narrative modes, Franzen uses extended figures, allegory, for one, more so than instance figures, like metaphor and simile. His character names are an especial metonymic delight. Richard "Dick" Katz is a villain/nemesis/diversion of the piece who preys on "songbird" women. Most critics praised the novel, some praised it and expressed reservations, few truly understood the subtexts' complexities.
J.R.R. Tolkien detested allegory. Wayne Booth notes that, refuse one rhetoric, another takes its place (The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961, A Rhetoric of Irony, 1974). Consciously or nonconciously. Allegory is an extended metaphor that organizes and unifies a whole, for which allegory's mechanical function performs magics. Both the above titles contain comprehensive rhetoric topic bibliographies.
Tolkien instead uses Homeric simile, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, circa 800 BCE, also known as epic simile, an extended simile, pieces, parts, and portions extended thereof and of the whole associate Middle Earth's heroic folk with Nature, villains unnatural and vile: Individuals and Nature, human nature, John Locke's theories of the pure state of Nature and natural law. Virgil uses epic simile, also, for the Aeneid, 19 BCE.
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For the most part, in these various threads concerning simile, metaphor and ‘metaphoricals’, you have been throwing around examples of fragments; parts of lines, fragments of descriptions and all without context of any kind. A simile or metaphor is not a creature unto itself; it is shaped and defined by its context.
“His eyes were the colour of the sea.”
By itself, and without context, the phrase is meaningless. But put the character on the edge of a storm tossed sea, the wind howling, as if keening for the dead, and you get a whole different sense of what colour his eyes are.
And, on the matter of giving advice, don’t be too quick to declare an unwavering point of view. If you intend to grow and develop as a writer, your opinions will, of necessity, change. The only way you will think the same way about the same things five years from now is if you stagnate and refuse to grow and move forward.
If the latter is the case, you will never experience the cold, dark and lonely night when you suddenly realise you may have been responsible for the derailment, or at least the delay, of a promising writing journey. One wrong word, in the wrong ear, and at the wrong time and you can change history.
1. The experiment disappeared like it was erased by an eraser 2. The experiment was erased by an eraser 3. The experiment was erased.
If the only goal was to list rhetorical devices, #3 can be lumped in with metaphors and forgotten. I think the inclusion in metaphors is fine, it's the forgotten part I worry about.
1. The method of delivery was flattering. It was like his enemies were praising him. 2. The method of delivery was flattering. His enemies were praising him. 3. The method of delivery praised him.
A test.
1. The experiment was erased. 2. The experiment was literally erased.
Doesn't #2 have a different meaning? Doesn't that mean #1 is figurative?
It has implications for writing, and I suppose making dictionaries.
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Hi Phil. The story takes place in Cuba, so maybe that would suggest a color to those people who know what the color of the sea is there. There was no other context -- the character was being described with the scene clock off, we had just read about his face.
I doubt that the author cared what color the reader imagined. Any color would add vividness, right? The character lived off the sea, so there was a cheap reference to that.
I am going for helping people write better books. I should be encouraged that you aren't finding any problems in the actual writing advice?
It was just an example.
The adrenaline that had gotten me this far seemed to flow out of my body like a 100-year flood.
A 100-year flood would cause things to flow into her body, not flow out. The author just wanted excitement, and the sentence succeeds at that. 100-year flood!
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First set number 1 is a simile. None of the others contain figurative expression.
Though this contains "like": "2. . . . It was like his enemies were praising him." the usage is actual expression of the circumstance. The grammar principle of it is a conditional supposition, subjunctive mood, that is. Test by rewrite for replacement of "like." //His enemies might could be praising him.//
Conditional supposition is a prose method and subjuncive mood a mode for projection of a subjective inference of another's interior discourse, private motivation, non-omniscient psychic access, etc., to another's thoughts, objective to an observer's subjective inference of a subject observed.
"2. The experiment was literally erased." uses "literally" for an intensifier, solely, though common usage substitutes the term for actually, really, and, prior to virtual reality emergence, virtually, none of which hold figurative significance. Hyponym companions of erased are scratched off, rubbed out, struck, struck out or off, removed, nullified.
Though to erase might have figurative significance, verbal metaphor, the use is not per se figurative. However, "erase," if reference to disappear by violence, or murder, for example, is figurative, a euphemism.
//The [applied physics, gravity?] experiment was, literally, murdered.// Dysphemism figure foremost, amplification figure, though empty intensifier, and verbal metaphor. Adverb intensifiers, "literally," take punctuation separation; those are personal commentary asides (parenthetic expression).
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SOrry, I did not give context on that last metaphorical about adrenaline. Soon after she is leaping and running. That's more evidence that the author just cared about excitment in the metaphorical.
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Hi Extrinsic. I have thought the way you are describing. So it's a reasonable way to think. You have made it logically consistent (though by assuming I didn't mean the word literally to mean the opposite of figuratively, even though I did and it should be possible to use the word that way.)
Everyone pretty much does think that way. The dictionaries seem to. I concede all of those points. It has a long history too.
I again want to stress how useful it is for me to discuss these issues of definition, and I think you and Phil.
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Use of "literally" and its adjuncts and root word to mean the opposite of figuratively often misses the base denotation of "literal": from Latin littera, of a letter, the correspondence form, and of, related to, or expressed in letters, compositions and alphabet letters, the former also alludes to all accomplished and competent written expression, prose, academic scholarship, poetry, publication, journalism, etc., which as well encompass figurative expression.
Literal and figurative are literal and vice versa, though mass culture and more than a few English scholars often use the terms imprecisely.
Location of "literally" herein "2. The experiment was literally erased." implies a generic intent of no particular design. Adverbs are syntax-location independent, assumed to modify a verb, therefore, immediate antecedent to a verb or adjacent thereto, though also modify adjectives, other adverbs, prepositions, phrases, clauses, sentences, are as well particles and conjunctive adverbs that connect content, and for parenthetic or direct commentary.
//Literally, the experiment was erased.// //The experiment, literally, was erased.// //The experiment was erased, literally.// Or for thoroughness' sake, //The experiment was, figuratively, erased.//
No clearer or stronger any one way or another. Hence, a best practice consideration is to excise "literally" altogether, or recast for emphasis, strength, and clarity enhancements, sans adverb.
A figure for consideration, so to speak, for that and the other examples derives from the grammar principle of passive voice. No doer of a predicate's action given. Who erased the experiment? Not given. Name a subject doer for conversion to active voice. Except if the doer is unknown, unimportant, omitted for impersonal expression purposes, or for an otherwise other rhetoric rationale.
Passive voice, if chosen by design and for strength, clarity, and emphasis virtues, ennoia is the figure: "A kind of purposeful holding back of information that nevertheless hints at what is meant. A kind of circuitous speaking." A circumlocution figure, also an occasion for grammar and rhetoric vices. (Gideon Burton, Silva Rhetoricae, rhetoric.byu.edu)
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Sorry, I was not clear. One could wonder about the status of "cut" in the following sentence. (She was dancing with someone she did not want to be dancing with, and he just left her without explanation.)
I'm left with the small cut of him leaving me standing in the middle of the dance floor like a discarded candy wrapper.
A word can start out as a fresh metaphor (or lexaphor or whatever you want to cal it). Then it gets used more often, the meaning comes easier, and the word can end up as a word corresponding to the metaphorical meaning. Incline is my usual example of that.
Anyway, that sentence uses "cut" to mean "Like a physical cut, in that she is injured and it hurts" is on that path. How far?
My test was this. If someone asked "Literally cut?", the answer would be no. If I had written "literally cut" that would have confused the reader.
So, cut still has at least some metaphorical status in that sentence.
Same for "I am in the toilet." If someone wrote, "Now I am literally in the toilet", I probably would not take that as an idiom, I would take it literal.
So that is a test for determining how much a word or phrase is figurative.
Dictionaries are a guide as to how far a metaphorical has moved to a word. The dictionaries list the metaphorical meaning after a while. So, a dictionary doesn't list the metaphorical meaning of "DNA" for a while, then when it's used often enough as a metaphor, the dictionary does (or will). I found one dictionary that defined cut as including emotional cuts and another that did not.
For "erase", one dictionary gave this as the second meaning.
to remove from existence or memory as if by erasing
Note how they are stating it as a simile! I think that just says "cut" is often used metaphorically.
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Figurative expression ranges from utterly none used, intended, or inferred at one rare extreme to nothing but figurative at an opposite rare extreme, and all locations between. This, too, like much of the cosmos, is a standard Bell distribution curve: some for more the most numerous occasions.
Do animals, plants, minerals, and natural forces express figurative meanings? Less than humans, none if false anthropomorphic inferences apply human conditions to those, many, if understood otherwise of a nonhuman condition, or inferred for situational irony.
"to remove from existence or memory[,] as if by erasing". "as if," that use is a two-word conjunction, not a simile. Never mind the use of a different form of the same word to define a word, considered a quality, relevance, and mannerism vice. Tested: "as if by erasing," altogether unnecessary; //to abolish from existence or memory through actual or imagined removal//. "through" is a more apt and seamless preposition particle part of speech connection than conjunction "as if."
"I'm left with the small cut of him leaving me standing in the middle of the dance floor[,] like a discarded candy wrapper." Though contains a simile, there, "the small cut" alludes to a Chinese proverb that originates from a torture practice, "Death of a thousand cuts." A metalepsis. By conscious design, subconscious intuition, or nonconscious happenstance.
The "the" of "the small cut" is the definite article adjective, an otherwise grammar error, though an apt poetic emphasis. Comma missed above, necessary to distinguish the true antecedent subject reference "I'm" from the "dance floor" is the discarded candy wrapper. Or dash instead for artful and apt poetic emphasis. Dependent, nonrestrictive, terminal clause punctuation separation and "such as" (for example) conjunction punctuation separation grammar principles.
I'd consider another simile reference to enhance, more emphasize "the small cut," and unify the sentence overall, a Band-aid, say, instead of a candy wrapper (parallelism, the rhetoric and grammar principles, auxesis, and sentence-length allegory). The two close proximity -ing words also would signal to me occasion for more robust and dynamic verb tense and voice considerations or, likewise, allegory. Instead of "standing," perhaps dying? Gertrude Stein uses abundant present progressive to signal a persistent state of being, that little, if any, true transformations of existence transpire (allegory within parts, parcels, and an entire body of work).
Multiple definitions of words and multiple words' parts of speech, like "cut," more so entail connotative uses than, per se, figurative expressions, though originated from denotations made figurative expressions and made idioms then connotations, perhaps adopted denotations, too, through persistent, everyday, trite usages.
"Rhetoric requires understanding a fundamental division between what is communicated through language and how this is communicated.
"Aristotle phrased this as the difference between logos (the logical content of a speech) and lexis (the style and delivery of a speech)." (Gideon Burton, "Content/Form," Silva Rhetoricae, rhetoric.byu.edu; italics emphases part of original.)
Generally, humans use figurative expression to a greater degree than nonfigurative, by artful design or poetic intuition or trite happenstance. In fact, an absence of figurative expression is considered an expression vice, though could be apt if for an extended ironic circumstance: overly formal expression that intimates intimate familiarity, for example. The figure is aschematiston: "The use of plain, unadorned or unornamented language. Or, the unskilled use of figurative language. A vice." (Ibid, Silva Rhetoricae)
A writing exercise might attempt a composition sans figures. That would expose how much the self, humans overall, rely on rhetoric figures, instances more than extendeds, and offer occasion for enhanced diction, syntax, and rhetoric consideration and craft skill development. The ancients did not learn nor instruct or assign methods of opposites for expression skill growth purposes; contemporary post grade-school age learning and instruction does, an extended form of intentional heuristics (trial and error, and expected failure).
Do this knowing the effort will fail, yet knowing the outcome occasions greater growth than decline. Like, say, to master and overcome a problematic expression tic, missed or trite figurative occasions, or to self-learn moral aptitudes. Or aversion therapy, or immersion therapy, or, not yet a clinical or public discourse, agora "thing," per se -- transcendence therapy.
For example, Maud Casey says of Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People," 1955, paraphrase, It's a wooden leg first; lavish attention on the literal. The figurative follows. (Emphases added.) Again, O'Connor more so uses extended figures than instances thereof.
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1. I'm left with the small insult of him leaving me standing in the middle of the dance floor.
2. I'm left with the small cut of him leaving me standing in the middle of the dance floor.
I think you are saying that "cut" is figurative. Right? If it's figurative, doesn't it have to be metaphorical?
To me, cut is metaphorical in that sentence, or at least mostly metaphorical, with a literal meaning of breaking the skin with a sharp object. You must agree with that at least a little, because you suggest using band-aid instead of candy wrapper when I add a simile.
I prefer cut to insult -- I think I get all of the advantages of a metaphorical and no cost. But, as you seem to agree, the situation changes if I add a simile:
3. I'm left with the small insult of him leaving me standing in the middle of the dance floor like a discarded candy wrapper.
4. I'm left with the small cut of him leaving me standing in the middle of the dance floor like a discarded candy wrapper.
You did not like how the literal meaning of cut fits with the literal meaning of candy wrapper. It's not a mixed metaphor in the sense of a clash, but the two literal meanings don't fit together either. I agree. I changed cut to insult and liked the sentence better.
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The "the small cut" usage by itself is plain speech, neither figurative nor metaphoric or metaphor. If one or more figures are used for the main clause and a stronger and clearer and parallel simile for the dependent clause, those emphasize an allusion to the proverb "A death of a thousand cuts." Then that phrase is figurative. Or another saying, "Add insult to injury" or "Add injury to insult," or other, and is metalepsis then, maybe allegory or epic simile, and hyperbole. "insult," to me, is ever more so plain speech than "cut."
Much of rhetoric's flowers are figurative speech yet not metaphoric allusive comparison or contrast, nor "use of one thing to describe another." Hyperbaton, for one, inverts conventional syntax, sentence structure ordered other than subject-predicate-object. Star War's Yoda speeches are hyperbaton. Yiddish speech patterns in English are hyperbaton. Of the thousand or so labeled figures, a minor fraction, twenty or so, are tropes, more or less metaphoric. Figures of diction, word choice, alone, outnumber tropes two or so to one. And forty or more categories of multiple individual figures, tropes but one of the lot.
Though maybe counterintuitive, therefore, uncomfortable, consider a full-court press expression, at least for illustrative purposes, or to enhance the scene's emotional and dramatic movement:
//He left me with the small cut, dead from shame on the dance floor -- like a discarded Band-aid.//
The dramatic situation of the sentence is, patently, a partial tension relief segment and ripe for delayed and further unsatisfied tension relief thereafter, until full tension relief unfolds. Tension setup, tension relief delay, partial tension relief, is a powerful and subtle dramatic segment sequence movement process, perhaps sentence-length, or at least scene-length and overall composition extended figures of order and arrangement, actually, auxesis or catacosmesis, or climax.
Point is, Do make a scene, fit drama proportion to the true dramatic nature of the moment and extended movement overall, not the "Don't make a scene" politeness social pressures impose.
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Hi extrinsic. I am not sure how you handle these issues.
I would agree with you that insult is "plain speech". I would have said 100% plain speech, maybe you want less.
I agree with you that "cut" is less plain speech. I would say only 40% plain speech; maybe you want more. Say 70%.
What is the other 30%? I want to say figurative/metaphorical.
Second. I can freely add adjectives that fit the 100% plain speech meaning of cut.
I was left with the paper cut of him leaving me I was left with the scalpel cut...
Third. The online Cambridge dictionary doesn't have that definition of cut. It has:
an injury made when the skin is cut with something sharp
They forgot? But someone thtought that was the only definition. They could still understand my sentence perfectly well as figurative/metaphorical. (I don't see how they would have any choice but that for "paper cut".)
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To me, a discarded band-aid is disgusting. Of course, I'm imagining blood, but even if it was pus I'm still disgusted.
So that "resonance", or whatever you want to call it, is a problem. For me, others might see it different. I know, you are getting the scene out of context. It's just that one of my advices is to consider resonance, so I wanted to mention that.
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"Insult" is more plain speech than "cut" from insult is denotation, cut is connotation, each entirely nonfigurative for the extant context and texture of the sentence.
Cambridge dictionary is an abridged dictionary, much fewer words and fewer definitions, plus fewer language topics, than Webster's and Oxford, like synonym distinction definitions from the once separate Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms, etymology, British variants, and usage excerpts from Webster's Dictionary of English Usage incorporated within comprehensive editions.
Webster's is the original and most comprehensive U.S. English dictionary by five or more times other English dictionaries except Oxford. The first Webster's edition predated Oxford's first edition by a century, occasions for the former's broad expansion over time and the latter's reverse engineered -- well, concept, platform, and format plagiarism. British English wanted its own editions anyway. Mercy, what, the peasant provincials beat the mother tongue at its own language's mastery!? Never!
A paper cut is nonetheless a connotation, and anyone who's had one knows paper is razor sharp, though adjective "paper" does a slight degree enhance figurative allusion to a cut as an insult. (Deesis figure above, "anyone who's had one": reference to witness testimony or vehement exclamation of desire. Both: For Providence's sake, the Doomsayer council believes, give us law and order or know our peace.) Another figure and its meld with deesis has, of late, occupied a midnight candle burnt, apoplanesis: "Promising to address the issue but effectively dodging it through a digression." (Ibid.)
Extended merger of those two figures is much heard from the lips of brain-blind politicians. Everyone knows Blorks that approach the western frontier are marauder pillagers, rapists, and saboteurs. Detail anon. By all that's decent, who would rid us of Blorks? <Topic changed without valid proof ever given that all of everyone knows nor proof any or all Blorks are marauders or, indeed, any or all are bound for the fatherland.> And, by all accounts, Fistian rabble claim need of the Blorks for obedient servants to the waterworks -- Attaton forbid!
A discarded Band-aid does offend the senses. Its resonance to the scene might be inapt, though could be apt and resonant with the dramatic situation otherwise, to express an explicit emotional texture, like disgust. The discarded Band-aid evoked vivid and lively visual, visceral, and emotional sensations; even if contrary to the scene's plan, a rhetoric success. Demonstrations often occasion an unsuited example so as to not interfere with another's creative vision development nor impose one's creative vision onto another's. Regardless, that is offered for demonstration purposes.
Shakespeare's Hamlet alludes to insults and emotional offenses as "slings and arrows," or slights and psychological harms, a word-substitution figure, anacoloutha: "Substituting one word with another whose meaning is very close to the original, but in a non-reciprocal fashion; that is, one could not use the first, original word as a substitute for the second. This is the opposite of acoloutha." (Ibid.) Metaphor-like description of one thing through use of another, though a scheme instance, not a trope, and may be extended.
Is a candy wrapper more or less apt, resonant, and explicit and an appeal to the senses, or is it inert: lifeless, artless, sensation-less, emotionless? A near infinite set of artful potential terms for the dramatic and rhetoric situations from which to choose which one is most apt, resonant, lively, vivid, concise, and evocative for the explicit situation. Abandoned with contempt's extreme prejudice? A slight meant to provoke a self-humiliating scene? Or an absentminded, thoughtless gesture? What? Why? (Rhetorical questions; nine explicit figure types: erotema, anacoenosis, anthypophora, dianoea, aporia, epiplexis, exuscitatio, pysma, ratiocinatio, though these herein for Socratic irony.)
None of these explications here and above and elsewhere are matters of what I want. Free will and free speech are to each and all persons an inalienable right and conscious, critical, responsible choices or happenstance, irrespective of self-expression's aptness or beauty, truth, or goodness degrees, or otherwise.
posted
I think . . . the minute a collection of letters becomes a word with meaning, it can be used metaphorically. So, if dictionaries wanted, they could give the literal definition of "nanosecond", then follow that with definition #2, a very short period of time, used as hyperbole. they could have done that 100 years ago.
DNA could be given it's precise biological definition, then #2 would be "something like DNA".
The second definition isn't needed for similes. But it is needed for lexaphors (or whatever you want to call them.)
It took me a nanosecond to decide to go. Avoiding risk was in the corporation's DNA.
Of course, it's a little inefficient to have definition #2 be essentially the same for every word. Dictionaries don't do that. Instead, they recognize when a lexaphor is commonly used and perhaps if it acquires a more specific meaning than would be guessed from the word alone.
So, the first person who used "cut" to mean emotional pain was using a fresh lexaphor and could easily be understood metaphorically. It has been used so often that it's familiar and doesn't require much thought. I'm not sure it's changed in meaning, though.
Added: That's how the idea of lexaphors changes how I look at things.
posted
The origins of writing and its history more so evinces abstract representations than figurative expression. The lowercase letter A originated from trade scribes marked a stylized aurochs with horns and the inventory of them with stroke marks. Four head of cattle was a ||||. Letter A first in many alphabets because cattle were the most valuable trade good and first in order inscribed on tablets.
Later divisions distinguished stroke groups for read and count ease. The roman numeral set evolved therefrom, per five strokes, one a diagonal stroke, the backslash for the fifth, V, 5, a diagonal stroke, the forward slash across the opposite direction for the tenth and thus X for ten. Clay scribes' right-hand dominance tilted the horned head of the lowercase A to its present form, a for most or all calligraphy and typography. Other matters also influenced letter shapes and dimensions; architecture and the Golden Ratio, for examples.
The rest of the alpha glyphs for Western alphabets derived from similar concrete representations. B for bethel, a door, C from gimel, and G, too, a type of sling, and so on. Capital case letters derived later, from stone carvers use of those on the entablature above the capitals of columns and due to the more frequent round bowls of lowercase letters were more difficult to carve neat. Indian mathematicians developed the Arabic numeral system that replaced roman numerals. Italics is a typographic representation of calligraphic monk's writing.
The length of time from antiquity to present-day calligraphy, typography, etc., for writing development evinces an abstract progression that, anymore, is separated from its abstract nature and origins and long established to the extent the abstraction is remote and is a concrete form. The same, though divisible and separate process of figurative expression and interpretation is from human abstract cognition aptitude, through use of different brain regions for rhetoric, writing, and reading.
posted
This and the other rhetoric discussions have been robust and dynamic. Though, for my part, these have been instructional, I have learned much, too. As concerns the uses of "lexaphor" for connotation and "metaphoricals" for tropes, if those aid rhetoric mastery, worth the midnight candle burnt and so be it. For those reasons alone, I support those self-coined terms, though that is the limit of my support for those.
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posted
Yes. But I have actually become more convinced of the need for lexaphor as a stand-alone concept.
1. seated four rows in front of a guy who looked like Sasquatch
I was expecting lexaphor, which would have been
2. seated four rows in front of Sasquatch
I like #2 better, and I got there only through lexaphor. The direct change to metaphor yields the awkward
3. seated four rows in front of a guy who was Sasquatch
I think we both want to call #2 a type of metaphor. But it would be difficult to explain how to get from #1 to #2 without using the concept of lexaphor.
#2 takes some confidence in the lexaphor, but that's always true of metaphors and in this case I think justified.
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"Sasquatch" labels a species, albeit of a mythic creature more than a few believe is genuine, and individuals or an individual of the species, or the tribe, or nation. The objective case nouns of numbers 1 and 2 become objective case adjective for 3 in sentence object complement position; and is a nonnumbered word, might be singular or singular in construction for plural uses or plural construction outright.
As is, 1 is plural, singular construction; 2 is singular; 3 is plural, singular construction. Actually, a grammar principle, not rhetoric; and each contains a grammar discretion -- perhaps a missed or otherwise unnecessary article. If necessary, then elision: omission of a word or words, ellipsis, a figure of omission: "Omission of a word [or words] or short phrase easily understood in context." (Ibid.)
Tested through word substitution and addition:
//1. seated four rows in front of a guy who looked like [an] Apache [or plus, person or persons]// plain speech (might or might not be Apache, conditional statement, subjunctive mood)
//2. seated four rows in front of [an or the] Apache [or plus, person or persons]// plain speech
//3. seated four rows in front of a guy[,] who was [an] Apache [or plus, person or persons]// plain speech (comma wanted for terminal, nonrestrictive, dependent clause separation that starts with what should be an objective case pronoun (whom, wordy), though in clause subject position (subjective case "who" for common speech); recast, less wordy: //seated four rows in front of an Apache guy//)
Or //seated four rows behind a guy who [or whom] looked [to be, or could be] Apache// (subjunctive mood, plain speech)
To become artful figurative expression, a different non-biped hominid label, or non-mammal taxonomy perhaps, a contrastive term, is wanted and one with no connotations connected to human behaviors or appearances (not bear connotations). The closest the above uses of "Sasquatch" come to figurative expression is those are attributive, not allusive; therefore, may be the figure metonymy, a trope, though a remote, if at all, possibility.
I was thinking about children learening. If we think of cut (or erase) as having two meanings, the concrete one would be really easy to learn by example.
The abstract one (cut from being insulted; erasing an experiment) would be very difficult to learn by example. But it would be fairly easy to understand as a metaphorical.
So I would expect learning to work that way. (And probably the word origin too.)
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posted
Human children's abstract cognitive aptitude starts to develop at about two years old; ability to express crude falsehoods and sarcasm are the more obvious abstract cognition skills that emerge first. Word definition and denotation and connotation distinction emerge about age ten. Broad and general rhetoric aptitude, mid young adult. Advanced rhetoric aptitude, about age twenty-five, middle adulthood onset, if ever.
No coincidence U.S. House representatives' minimum age is twenty-five and the traditional age advanced learning starts. That's the age human physical maturity completes, mostly brain neural pathways' maturity peak. Emotional maturity and moral aptitude peak years later, if at all. Double bind (cognitive dissonance) quantity, quality, relevance, and mannerism experienced and how reconciled thereto in childhood's twenty-five-year span is a foremost factor for advanced rhetoric, moral maturity, and moral aptitude degrees and when peaks are obtained.
posted
Emma, why not look up the word 'cut' in the dictionary? If you do, you'll find every example you've cited, and more. None of which are similes; most of them are transitive verbs. In all its guises, it is a word in common usage. I would humbly suggest you are over-complicating the obvious.
Perhaps you should re-visit what constitutes a simile and a metaphor.
Phil.
[ November 07, 2018, 08:15 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
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posted
Hi Phil. We did look them up in the dictionary. I know it's hard to find in the long discussion above, but that was a few steps ago.
One of the dictionaries left out the meaning of cut as an emotional wound. Whatever their reason, that omission creates no problem understand my sentence, where people could and would simply understand "cut" as metaphorical.
Which means, when a dictionary includes that meaning, they are in a sense being redundant and making the definitions longer than they should.
This can be contrasted to a cut of meat or making the cut, where the dictionary definition probably helps.
One way the discussion moved on is if "cut" means an emotional hurt, then what happens when "cut" is changed to "paper cut"? That's easily handled if think of it as metaphorical in the first place.
If you call "cut" and the replacement "insult" to be both words, fine, but extrinsic thought that insult was more plain speech than "cut". I happen to agree. But then you have the word "cut" not being fully plain speech, which is not so easy to explain.
There's even more problems with denying any metaphorical status to "cut" (or "erase"). Neither extrinsic or I liked the sentence with "cut" and "discarded candy wrapper" in it. How are you going to account for that if "cut" is just a plain word like "insult", which produces no conflict.
There are more problems, but they take a while to explain.
Does this catch you up? What is your opinion on these issues?
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posted
"I was seated four rows in front of a guy who looked like [he could be] Sasquatch."
To look like a circumstance, a Sasquatch there, is a conditional statement -- contingent case, subject to verification. If the guy looked like he could be a banana, for example, that's still conditional. If he looked like a clarinet player, still conditional. If "it" looked like [it would] rain, still conditional, plus, a future conditional event, not certain to rain. It has to rain for verification's sake. Conditional statements are the grammar principle subjunctive mood.
To have a semblance to a circumstance and be simile, a statement's mood wants indicative or, maybe, imperative, not subjunctive mood.
Indicative mood simile, the example from Robert Burns' poem: "My love is like a red, red rose." Substitution test: //My love resembles a red, red rose.// Is -- is -- the validated look, the likeness, semblance, resemblance, appearance, nature of, like a red rose. // Is [-- is --] like a Sasquatch// Indicative mood, no conditional, contingent, subjunctive mood about it.
"I'm left with the small cut of him leaving me standing in the middle of the dance floor"
"¹cut" denotation, verb "1: to penetrate with or as if with an edged instrument" - connotation, "2: to hurt the feelings of" - ²cut, noun, denotation, "1: a product of cutting as a (1): an opening made with an edged instrument (2): a wound made by something sharp : GASH" - connotation, "(2): the act or instance of cutting as a: a gesture or expression that hurts the feelings <made an unkind cut>" (Webster's).
Grammar and rhetoric overlap and occasion congruent application. In fact, library catalog systems label the overall written, printed, speech, and language composition strategy categories "Rhetoric." Grammar is at least prescriptive, often proscriptive, rarely descriptive principles. Rhetoric, though, is a set of descriptive principles and entails a grammar principle exception set.
If this grammar principle and that rhetoric principle clash, if the rhetoric principle is more apt for the intent, and of receiver comprehension ease, favor the rhetoric principle before the grammar principle, mindful grammar vice might also be rhetoric vice. Or rather, best practice, grammar vice for greater rhetoric virtue.
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