Dead metaphor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A dead metaphor is a metaphor that through overuse has lost figurative value. Examples of dead metaphors include:

• "foot of a hill."
• "eye of a needle."
• "branches of government."
• "windfall."
• "son of a gun"

In many cases the speaker does not understand the literal meaning of a metaphor, but uses it nevertheless. The user understands the phrase as a complete semantic unit rather than as a metaphor, i.e. the entire phrase carries a meaning distinct from the sum of the meanings of its individual components.

For instance, horses once played an important part in human activities, but nowadays few people in the West have experience of them. Despite this, modern English is riddled with equine metaphors: "holding the reins of power", "trot it out", "take the bit between one's teeth", "be saddled with", "put him through his paces", "ride roughshod over", "flogging a dead horse", "give the whip hand", "look a gift horse in the mouth", "long in the tooth", "put out to pasture", "getting his oats" and so on. These may be considered dead metaphors as the historical equine-related meaning is generally not appreciated by the contemporary user.

[edit] External links

• Metaphor and Meaning, an article by William Grey, a Reader in Philosophy at the University of Queensland