Tradition

Metaphor

Overview

A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for literary effect, refers to one thing by mentioning another. Thus, it invites the audience to make a comparison between two normally unrelated entities or ideas, which may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between them. Metaphors are usually meant to create a likeness or an analogy.

Scholars group metaphors with other types of figurative language, such as hyperbole and metonymy. Metaphors are most similar to similes, except in metaphor the comparison is implied or assumed whereas the extra wording of a simile makes the comparison more obvious or explicit. According to Grammarly, "Figurative language examples include similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, allusions, and idioms." One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature comes from the "All the world's a stage" monologue from As You Like It:

This quotation expresses a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage, and most humans are not literally actors and actresses playing roles. By asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses points of comparison between the world and a stage to convey an understanding about the mechanics of the world and the behavior of the people within it.

In the ancient Hebrew Book of Psalms (around 1000 B.C.), one finds vivid and poetic examples of metaphor such as, "The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold" and "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want". Some recent linguistic theories view all language in essence as metaphorical. The etymology of a word may uncover a metaphorical usage which has since become obscured with persistent use - such as for example the English word "window", etymologically equivalent to "wind eye".

The word metaphor itself is a metaphor, coming from a Greek term meaning 'transference (of ownership)'. The user of a metaphor alters the reference of the word, "carrying" it from one semantic "realm" to another. The new meaning of the word might derive from an analogy between the two semantic realms, but also from other reasons such as the distortion of the semantic realm - for example in sarcasm.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Metaphor is discussed.

Such expressions, indeed, are rather bold: but the resemblance between the metaphor and the object is either remarkably obvious; or else, when the latter has no proper name to express it, the metaphor is so far from appearing to be laboured, that we seem to use it merely to explain our meaning. This, therefore, is an ornament in which our artless Orator may indulge himself more freely; but not so openly as in the…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Metaphor is the application of an alien name by transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion. Thus from genus to species, as: 'There lies my ship'; for lying at anchor is a species of lying.
Aristotle, The Poetics of Aristotle
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
If I herewith, after all, justify the nature of the opera for æsthetics, I am of course far from justifying at the same time bad opera music or bad opera-verses. The worst music can still mean, as compared with the best poetry, the Dionysean world-subsoil, and the worst poetry can be mirror, image and reflection of this subsoil, if together with the best music: as certainly, namely, as the single tone against the…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Early Greek Philosophy & Other Essays Collected Works, Volume Two
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Hence a divine precept is sometimes called by metaphor the will of God, as in the words: "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10). There is, however, this difference between will and anger, that anger is never attributed to God properly, since in its primary meaning it includes passion; whereas will is attributed to Him properly. Therefore in God there are distinguished will in its proper sense…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
So that the same word may obviously be at once strange and ordinary, though not in reference to the same people; _sigunos_, for instance, is an ordinary word in Cyprus, and a strange word with us. Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of analogy. That from…
Aristotle, Aristotle on the art of poetry
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Metaphor

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Metaphor

Related ideas

Place in the tradition