Metaphor vs alternate sense

When does a metaphor cease to be a metaphor and becomes intimately associated with the true meaning of the concept? Well it happens when such metaphor is used so frequently that it displaces the original term used to express the thought. For example when we say “his campaign is having a noticeable impact on the Latino vote”, do you really still think of "impact" in that sense as a metaphor for effect? It seems to me that some usages pass from being metaphors to being alternative senses. If your attitude is "once a metaphor, always a metaphor", and you want to avoid mixing metaphors, then you'd have to needlessly restrict your usage of words you'd regard as metaphors. Take for example "the social impact will be very high". High? Surely not. Severe; yes. That is unless we no longer think of impact as metaphor. Another popular example, you'd lose "to exceed (or beat) a target" if for you the only true sense of "target" is that arrangement of colored rings that archers aim at, because "exceeding" it presumably means overshooting it, which is not the desired effect, and "beating" it presumably means striking it, which is rather a silly thing to do.

Alex, racing the clock to beat the deadlines and getting a head spin doing it..

Color my word

Now then, if you have a wicked mind like I do, you would be going around finding metaphorical expressions and mixing them together or simply corrupting terms within to make malaphors. But then, that leads us to something else. A mixed metaphor that is deliberately made so, or say an intentional malaphor is called farberism. Here are some farberisms for fun. Please come up with some more:

They were both as strong as two peas in a pod.
They always bite the hand that lays the golden eggs.
This is the real carrot at the end of the rainbow.
He's a kind of Jekyll of all trades.
You're a parasite for sore eyes.
One back scratches another.
One doesn't swallow the whole cake at the first sitting.
One man's curiosity is another man's Pandora's box.
Our backs are up the wall.
Our deal fell through the boards.

Alex -J'ai mal a forehead.

Perfect timing!

Perfect timing, Alex! You couldn't have chosen a better time to reinvent Wordplay, Alex. The political scene is generating so much cr--that is, verbal turmoil--that the ludicrous language being spewed out by campaigning politicos and their advisors should continue to provide great opportunities for delightful repartee until November. (Unless I misunderestimate our zeal.)

Al

reeds like a duck

Thank you, Alex, for the honor of your invitation to post directly to this blog from the outset. I'm unfamiliar with blogging, but I hope that my existing patterns of blather will suffice for the nonce. In time I may come to know better. Meanwhile, a query: Is the ObWP a feature of this incarnation of Wordplay?

.

I wish I still found it funny to "flush out" a subject. Alas, the expression is ubiquitous at my new workplace. It means both "flesh out" and "flush out" -- a sad loss of clarity and finesse. The dry bones shudder. At this point I want to flush the phrase completely out of the vocabulary of anyone who is neither hunting nor irrigating (medically or otherwise).

.

On a more cheerful topic, however, I prefer to pull out only three or four stops at a time. I started playing on my father's harmonium (which he has still) before I could reach the pedals. It looks a good bit like this one, though with the stops arranged differently and less fancywork on top.

I sat on his lap, which danced as he pumped the pedals, mashing merrily on the keys with a fine disregard for the harmony for which the instrument is named. I learned early, probably even before I could talk, that one must NEVER try to play with all the stops pushed in. Later I learned why: with all the stops in, the pumped air has nowhere to go, and most likely will rip the bellows.

.

Indeed, one must be careful to pull out stops corresponding with the complete range of notes one intends to play. Some stops govern only one section of the keyboard. Thus my preference for pulling out three stops (top, middle, and bottom of the keyboard) or four (I never could resist the Vox Humana stop). However, pulling out all the stops turns playing the harmonium into a hefty workout, since utilizing ALL the reeds at once -- particularly if one is playing a lot of full, rich chords comprised of many notes each, and using the knee-levers to swell the volume a lot -- takes a good deal of air from the bellows.

.

Thus, in a way, playing a loud and full-bodied piece on the harmonium resembles the well-known image of a duck: balanced and smooth* above, while paddling -- er, pedaling -- like hell underneath.

[* smooth : Staccato is not an option on this instrument.]

Metaphors be with you!

I am reminded that mixed metaphors are now referred to as malaphors. That's an apt term, considering that it is in itself portmanteau for metaphor and malapropism. However, I tend to think that mixed metaphors would result from inadvertently mixing two perfectly distinct metaphorical expressions which have a certain term in common. On the other hand, a malaphor would be the result of committing malapropism in citing a metaphor. The bridge example I gave in the previous post is a perfect illustration of a mixed metaphor. A former participant to the old Wordplay list has supplied with me with a collection of malaphors he amassed over the years. Here are some of them:

I'm going to have to stay on the eyeball.
That is mundane to the topic at hand
We don't want to jump the gun too early.
I don't want to misspeak out of turn.
We're over inundating them with information
We need to appraise him of the fact
These figures personify a major mega-trend of enormous growth
We'll flush out the details later.
They'll give us feedback back.
The machine was misconfigured incorrectly
The circuits need to be trouble-shat.

Don't count your chickens before they cross the road

One does not leave the topic of metaphors without having their sense of the funny tickled by the notion of mixed metaphors. Here are some that come to mind. Feel free to add some of your own...


The worm is on the other foot
If worst comes to shove...
We will burn that bridge when we come to it
A journey of a thousand miles starts at the begining
Life imitates fiction

Pulling out all the stops

David Moody said...
Takes me back to the "old days," when I played my way through college, hands and feet on the pipe organ for the Episcopalians on Sunday mornings, for the Methodist Youth Fellowship on Sunday evenings, for the Seventh Day Adventists on Saturday mornings, and for their respective choirs in rehearsal on Thursday, Wednesday and Tuesday evenings. What with subbing for my Roman Catholic colleague on holiday midnight masses, I was well acquainted with organ stops.However, the only times I really pulled out "all the stops" was for wedding recessionals and when playing the Dies Irae at the occasional appropriate high-church Episcopal ("call me Anglican") service.Yes, on the older organs one didn't press down on little ivory tabs; one pulled out those two-inch circular flat knobs to admit keyboard-actuated air to a given rank of pipes. When they were completely pushed in, they "stopped" the flow of air to that rank of pipes, hence, they were "stops." The air compressor on the oldest organ was a set of bellows operated by apprentice altar boys; I had to be sure that at least three of them were available for the Dies Irae.