thumb|upright=1.35|1835 etching by [[George Cruikshank illustrating the metaphor of describing strong weather as "raining cats, dogs and pitchforks"]]

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."<!-- direct quote from the source needs quotes and attribution --> 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:

<blockquote><poem>All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant...

:—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7</poem>

</blockquote>

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 "", etymologically equivalent to "wind eye".

The word&nbsp;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.

Etymology

The English word metaphor derives from the 16th-century Old French word , which comes from the Latin , 'carrying over', and in turn from the Greek (), 'transference (of ownership)', from (), 'to carry over, to transfer' and that from (), 'behind, along with, across' + (), 'to bear, to carry'.

Parts of a metaphor

The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) by rhetorician I. A. Richards describes a metaphor as having two parts: the tenor and the vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed. In the previous example, "the world" is compared to a stage, describing it with the attributes of "the stage"; "the world" is the tenor, and "a stage" is the vehicle; "men and women" is the secondary tenor, and "players" is the secondary vehicle.

Other writers employ the general terms ground and figure to denote the tenor and the vehicle. Cognitive linguistics uses the terms target and source, respectively.

Psychologist Julian Jaynes coined the terms metaphrand and metaphier, plus two new concepts, paraphrand and paraphier.

Metaphrand is equivalent to the metaphor-theory terms tenor, target, and ground. Metaphier is equivalent to the metaphor-theory terms vehicle, figure, and source. In a simple metaphor, an obvious attribute of the metaphier exactly characterizes the metaphrand (e.g. "the ship plowed the seas"). With an inexact metaphor, however, a metaphier might have associated attributes or nuances – its paraphiers – that enrich the metaphor because they "project back" to the metaphrand, potentially creating new ideas – the paraphrands – associated thereafter with the metaphrand or even leading to a new metaphor. For example, in the metaphor "Pat is a tornado", the metaphrand is Pat; the metaphier is tornado. As metaphier, tornado carries paraphiers such as power, storm and wind, counterclockwise motion, and danger, threat, destruction, etc. The metaphoric meaning of tornado is inexact: one might understand that 'Pat is powerfully destructive' through the paraphrand of physical and emotional destruction; another person might understand the metaphor as 'Pat can spin out of control'. In the latter case, the paraphier of 'spinning motion' has become the paraphrand 'psychological spin', suggesting an entirely new metaphor for emotional unpredictability, a possibly apt description for a human being hardly applicable to a tornado.

Based on his analysis, Jaynes claims that metaphors not only enhance description, but "increase enormously our powers of perception...and our understanding of [the world], and literally create new objects". An example of mixed metaphor in print.]]

Metaphors are most frequently compared with similes. A metaphor asserts the objects in the comparison are identical on the point of comparison, while a simile merely asserts a similarity through use of words such as like or as. For this reason a common-type metaphor is generally considered more forceful than a simile.

The metaphor category contains these specialized types:

  • Allegory: An extended metaphor wherein a story illustrates an important attribute of the subject.
  • Antithesis: A rhetorical contrast of ideas by means of parallel arrangements of words, clauses, or sentences.
  • Catachresis: A mixed metaphor, sometimes used by design and sometimes by accident (a rhetorical fault).
  • Hyperbole: Excessive exaggeration to illustrate a point.
  • Parable: An extended metaphor told as an anecdote to illustrate or teach a moral or spiritual lesson, such as in Aesop's fables or Jesus' teaching method as told in the Bible.
  • Pun: A verbal device by which multiple definitions of a word or its homophones are used to give a sentence multiple valid readings, typically to humorous effect.
  • Similitude: An extended simile or metaphor that has a picture part (), a reality part (), and a point of comparison (tertium comparationis). Similitudes are found in the parables of Jesus.

It is said that a metaphor is "a condensed analogy" or "analogical fusion" or that they "operate in a similar fashion" or are "based on the same mental process" or yet that "the basic processes of analogy are at work in metaphor." It is also pointed out that "a border between metaphor and analogy is fuzzy" and "the difference between them might be described (metaphorically) as the distance between things being compared."

Metaphor vs metonymy

Metaphor is distinct from metonymy, as the two concepts embody different fundamental modes of thought. Metaphor works by bringing together concepts from different conceptual domains, whereas metonymy uses one element from a given domain to refer to another closely related element. A metaphor creates new links between otherwise distinct conceptual domains, whereas a metonymy relies on pre-existent links within such domains.

For example, in the phrase "lands belonging to the crown", the word crown is a metonymy because some monarchs do indeed wear a crown, physically. In other words, there is a pre-existent link between crown and monarchy. On the other hand, when Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that the Israeli language is a "phoenicuckoo cross with some magpie characteristics", he is using metaphor.

There is no physical link between a language and a bird. The reason the metaphors phoenix and cuckoo are used is that on the one hand hybridic Israeli is based on Hebrew, which, like a phoenix, rises from the ashes; and on the other hand, hybridic Israeli is based on Yiddish, which like a cuckoo, lays its egg in the nest of another bird, tricking it to believe that it is its own egg. Furthermore, the metaphor magpie is employed because, according to Zuckermann, hybridic Israeli displays the characteristics of a magpie, "stealing" from languages such as Arabic and English.

A mixed metaphor is a metaphor that leaps from one identification to a second inconsistent with the first, e.g.:

This form is often used as a parody of metaphor itself:

An extended metaphor, or conceit, sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. In the above quote from As You Like It, the world is first described as a stage and then the subsidiary subjects men and women are further described in the same context.

An implicit metaphor has no specified tenor, although the vehicle is present. M. H. Abrams offers the following as an example of an implicit metaphor: "That reed was too frail to survive the storm of its sorrows". The reed is the vehicle for the implicit tenor, someone's death, and the storm is the vehicle for the person's sorrows.

Metaphor can serve as a device for persuading an audience of the user's argument or thesis, the so-called rhetorical metaphor.

Absolute metaphor

In rhetoric and literature

Aristotle writes in his work the Rhetoric that metaphors make learning pleasant: "To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify something, so whatever words create knowledge in us are the pleasantest." When discussing Aristotle's Rhetoric, Jan Garret stated "metaphor most brings about learning; for when [Homer] calls old age "stubble", he creates understanding and knowledge through the genus, since both old age and stubble are [species of the genus of] things that have lost their bloom". Metaphors, according to Aristotle, have "qualities of the exotic and the fascinating; but at the same time we recognize that strangers do not have the same rights as our fellow citizens".

Educational psychologist Andrew Ortony gives more explicit detail: "Metaphors are necessary as a communicative device because they allow the transfer of coherent chunks of characteristics – perceptual, cognitive, emotional and experiential – from a vehicle which is known to a topic which is less so. In so doing they circumvent the problem of specifying one by one each of the often unnameable and innumerable characteristics; they avoid discretizing the perceived continuity of experience and are thus closer to experience and consequently more vivid and memorable."

As style in speech and writing

As a characteristic of speech and writing, metaphors can serve the poetic imagination. This allows Sylvia Plath, in her poem "Cut", to compare the blood issuing from her cut thumb to the running of a million soldiers, "redcoats, every one"; and enabling Robert Frost, in "The Road Not Taken", to compare a life to a journey.

Metaphors can be implied and extended throughout pieces of literature.

Larger applications

Sonja K. Foss characterizes metaphors as "nonliteral comparisons in which a word or phrase from one domain of experience is applied to another domain".

She argues that since reality is mediated by the language we use to describe it, the metaphors we use shape the world and our interactions to it.

thumb|A metaphorical visualization of the word [[anger]]

The term "metaphor" can characterise basic or general aspects of experience and cognition:

  • A cognitive metaphor is the association of object to an experience outside the object's environment.
  • A conceptual metaphor is an underlying association that is systematic in both language and thought.
  • A root metaphor is the underlying worldview that shapes an individual's understanding of a situation.
  • A nonlinguistic metaphor is an association between two nonlinguistic realms of experience.
  • A visual metaphor uses an image to create the link between different ideas.

Conceptual metaphors

Some theorists have suggested that metaphors are not merely stylistic, but are also cognitively important. In Metaphors We Live By (1980), George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not only in language but also in thought and action. A common definition of metaphor presents it as a comparison that shows how two things, which are not alike in most ways, are similar in another important way. In this context, metaphors contribute to the creation of multiple meanings within polysemic complexes across different languages. Furthermore, Lakoff and Johnson explain that a metaphor is essentially the understanding and experiencing of one kind of thing in terms of another, which they refer to as a "conduit metaphor". According to this view, a speaker can put ideas or objects into containers and then send them along a conduit to a listener, who removes the object from the container to make meaning of it. Thus, communication is conceptualized as something that ideas flow into, with the container being separate from the ideas themselves. Lakoff and Johnson provide several examples of daily metaphors in use, including "argument is war" and "time is money". These metaphors occur widely in various contexts to express personal meanings. In addition, the authors suggest that communication can be viewed as a machine: "Communication is not what one does with the machine, but is the machine itself."

Moreover, experimental evidence shows that "priming" people with material from one area can influence how they perform tasks and interpret language in a metaphorically related area.

Omnipresent metaphor may provide an indicator for researching the functionality of language.

As a foundation of our conceptual system

Cognitive linguists emphasize that metaphors serve to facilitate the understanding of one conceptual domain—typically an abstraction such as "life", "theories" or "ideas"—through expressions that relate to another, more familiar conceptual domain—typically more concrete, such as "journey", "buildings" or "food". For example: one devours a book of raw facts, tries to digest them, stews over them, lets them simmer on the back-burner, regurgitates them in discussions, and cooks up explanations, hoping they do not seem half-baked.