The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others, and it is also a sign of genius.
Aristotle, in Poetics
Poem: Rapper date night
She wants punchlines and metaphors But that's not what I met her for I just came for the date On the app she an 8 But in person I met a 4
Metaphors are nothing new: you can find them in movies, music, books and even everyday language. But recently I have become more fond of metaphor: it seems to be even more ubiquitous than it once was (if that's possible 🤔).
In this blog post, I would like to discuss a method I discovered that makes it easy to detect metaphors.
Metaphor is all about lying
A quote by Terry Pratchett has stuck with me since I first heard it:
A metaphor is a kind o' lie to help people understand what's true.
Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
How you may ask? Well, let's take a look at some metaphors!
What better place to look than the book of Proverbs in the Bible:
- The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. (Proverbs 21:1a)
- The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason. (Proverbs 26:16)
- The rod and reproof give wisdom: But a child let to himself bringeth his mother to shame. (Proverbs 29:15)
Let's examine each closely by asking ourselves questions about each statement:
- Is the beating heart ❤️ of the king literally in the hand 🫱 of the Lord?
- Is the sluggard literally wiser 🧠 than seven men that render reason?
- Does the rod 🦯 and reproof literally give wisdom 👴👵?
As you can see, asking these questions brings us a little closer to what the author intended to say. Each metaphor raises a question because each metaphor is a lie; they are not literally what they say they are, but imagining them in that sense gives us a deeper way of understanding their meanings.
Resolving the lies
Now that we have raised questions and discovered some lies, let's figure out the truth:
- The king's heart is not the Lord's physical hand; the author implies that the Lord can control the intentions of the king.1
- The sluggard is not wiser than seven men, but feels he is because he's lazy; he is incapable of thinking beyond what would cause him discomfort.
- The rod and reproof do not give wisdom like a parent handing a gift to his child; wisdom is a product of the rod and reproof. The rod used here is not about the physical rod, but more about what it symbolizes. It symbolizes correction and order.
The bottom line
Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate, learn, discover, and invent. But metaphor is a way of thought before it is a way with words.
James Geary, author, I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World
Sometimes, the overuse of cliché metaphors numbs us to their original effect. Knowing how to detect metaphors can help rejuvenate them in our minds once more and make understanding figurative language a breeze.