So tempting to spell that “bephor.” Get it? Be-phor? The editor in me would not allow it. I am 90 percent (or more) editor so when the editor in me decides something there’s no overruling it. Very little of me is not made up of editor.
For a while I have been kicking around the idea of doing a series on literary devices with each installment taking a deep dive into one literary device, which today’s happens to be metaphor. There are many literary devices out there, which makes for a deep well of topics. Metaphor was the first to come to mind, as I suspect it would be for a lot of people.
Shelf Life is built upon the first thing that comes to mind, because if I waited around for other things to come to mind and then wrote about only the best ones, I’d be out of topics first of all and second of all I’d waste a lot of time waiting for things to come to mind. When I start writing about the first thing that comes to mind and then five more things come to mind, I write those five more things down for other days when nothing comes to mind. That’s your writing advice for the day. Stash away the ideas that come to mind for a rainy day when no new ideas come to mind.
Now that’s out of the way.
Before I get into the meat of the metaphor topic, I want to get this potentially controversial take out of the way, which is: I will be including simile in the metaphor discussion because in my opinion a simile is a type of metaphor. Not everybody or every source agrees on this. Depending on who you ask, either a simile is a type of metaphor and falls under the broad heading of metaphoric language or simile and metaphor are distinct types of figurative language and can be told apart using a few simple rules. Since you asked me I’m telling you a simile is a metaphor like a square is a rectangle—a square is a type of rectangle; a square is a rectangle that meets particular criteria (all sides the same length). Thus, all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.
That last was an analogy by the way—the explanation of the relationship between simile and metaphor by comparing it to the relationship between square and rectangle—which is a literary device I’ll do some other time.
A metaphor is a type of figurative language that likens one thing—which could be a physical thing or an idea—to another to illustrate the similarities between them (or, rarely, the differences, which I’ll discuss later). When you use a metaphor you describe one thing using the characteristics of another.
Therefore, every metaphor has two parts: The thing you are describing and the thing whose characteristics you are borrowing for the description. Metaphor relies on the receiver of the metaphor (the reader or listener) having some sense of that second thing so they can apply their existing knowledge of it to whatever it is you’re describing. Consider this example:
Her eyes were flawless sapphires.
If you are describing a character’s eyes, the reader has no way to know what those eyes look like until you tell them. The character being fictional in this example. The eyes do not exist. The reader has definitely not seen these eyes. However, your reader likely knows what a sapphire is. It’s a blue gem. Now the trick of it is, the eyes are not literally blue gems, unless this character is some kind of automaton or doll that has literal sapphires set in its eye sockets, or perhaps a person who has by misfortune lost both eyes but by some great fortune had two flawless sapphires handy to use for their replacements. Unless you are writing a really wacky story, most readers reading this will understand it is a metaphor: The eyes are not literally flawless sapphires, but figurative. The writer means these eyes have the characteristics of flawless sapphires.
Another example, from Shakespeare by way of Rush:
All the world’s indeed a stage, and we are merely players, performers, and portrayers.
I had a nice debate today over lunch about the merits of Rush versus Yes. No conclusion yet reached.
In this metaphor (both versions), the writer describes all the world by drawing a parallel between it and a stage, specifically by suggesting that:
(In the original) everyone plays many roles in their one life (infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, et cetera); and
(In the remix) that people going about their lives are all putting on various facades and shows for one another (“each another’s audience”).
I literally was today years old when I learned the “All the World’s a Stage” monologue comes from As You Like It; I always thought it was from The Tempest. It’s funny what you learn doing four years of an English degree and what you don’t.
Anyway, all of the above are the very basics of metaphor, but that’s not good enough for Shelf Life. I said a deep dive and we’re taking a deep dive and looking at various metaphor types and applications.
Simile
First up is the aforementioned simile, which is a type of metaphor (according to me) that makes a comparison between two things but explicitly, most often using “like” or “as” to draw the parallel. For instance:
Her eyes were blue as sapphires.
Her smile was like the sun.
In these simile examples, the comparison is explicit while in the prior metaphor examples I used, the comparison was implicit. If I write, “she had a heart of gold” the reader must infer (first) that I am speaking figuratively and not describing an automaton with a mechanical heart made from cold; (second) that I want the reader to take characteristics from gold and apply them to this character’s heart; and (third) figure out which characteristics of gold I want the reader to associate. Gold is pure. Gold is also soft, malleable, and conducts heat and electricity. Perhaps I mean that her heart is an excellent conductor.
If I write, “she had a heart as pure as gold,” the comparison is explicit. There’s no question that the heart might be literally made of gold, and you don’t have to guess which characteristics of gold the heart in question has.
You can see why it’s debatable that these are two separate categories of figurative language: Metaphor, always implicit; simile always explicit. Therefore, they are two separate, equivalent parts of the same whole (figurative language). However, I remain convinced that a metaphor is any figurative language that conveys the characteristics of one thing onto another thing, with a simile being the specific type that does this explicitly. Your mileage may vary.
Regarding similes, we all learned in school that “like” and “as” are the trigger words that mean something is a simile, but there are a few more that are less common and often overlooked—“so” and “than.”
Examples:
Her face lit up brighter than a sunny day.
Life is cruel and so am I.
Now that I say think of it, I suppose “neither” would also fit the bill if you were drawing a comparison to how to things are similar in what they lack (eg, “Life isn’t fair and neither am I.”). There are probably more words that herald a simile than dreamt of in our philosophy. I’m out of ideas, though.
Negative Metaphor
I couldn’t really think what else to call this, there probably is some word for it but I searched for a while and could not find it. If anyone knows, tell me in the comments and I’ll make an update.
A negative metaphor is what I call it when you use a metaphor (or simile) to describe how something is not like something else. The most obvious and prominent example I can think of is, this time directly, from Shakespeare:
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.
This is a simile, in that Shakespeare is using “like” to draw a comparison between someone’s eyes and the sun. This time, however, instead of conveying characteristics of the sun and applying them to the eyes, he’s asking the reader to think about what they know of the sun and imagine that the eyes are not like that. Sun is bright? Well, her eyes are not bright. The sonnet is about how the mistress is not lovely in the way many poems make women out to be by comparing them to inanimate objects and natural phenomena—but the narrator loves her anyway.
Another example from the common parlance:
He’s no prize.
A prize is something of high value, something you might receive as a reward. If I say someone is no prize then I ask you to imagine the characteristics of a prize (special, high value, desirable) and consider that the person I’m describing lacks those.
Dead Metaphor
Morbid. A dead metaphor is one that is so ubiquitous that it has developed its own meaning ecosystem and no longer functions as a true metaphor (comparing one thing to another) but instead relies on receivers of the metaphor (listeners or readers) knowing the metaphor’s meaning already.
A metaphor is most often dead because the thing whose characteristics are being borrowed no longer exists or has become obscure over time so that most users are not familiar with the original image. For instance:
Charlie was three sheets to the wind.
Many of us recognize this expression to mean that Charlie is very intoxicated. Most of us would not know offhand why the image of three sheets blowing around in the wind is similar to an intoxicated person. A sailor would know that in this case a sheet refers to the line that affixes the corner of a boat’s sail to the deck, to keep the sail from flopping around. If the sheet is loose, the bottom of the sail isn’t tethered and the sail’s just flopping around. If you have three sails and they are secured by three sheets, and all three sheets are loose, your ship is totally out of control. Therefore, a ship with “three sheets to the wind” is completely out of control, like Charlie is when they are completely drunk.
Mixed Metaphor
A mixed metaphor is my favorite kind. To mix a metaphor, simply choose two metaphors that are incompatible and smash them together in a hilarious and inappropriate way, like a banana and mayonnaise sandwich. You get bonus points for delivering a mixed metaphor with a straight face and deadpan tone, such that your listeners think you think it is correct an appropriate.
For example:
It’s not rocket surgery.
Rocket science is hard. Brain surgery is hard. If you want to tell someone that something is easy, you might tell them, “It’s not rocket science” or, “It’s not brain surgery.” Rocket surgery is not a thing.
You can make another one by mixing together “not the brightest bulb in the box” and “not the sharpest knife in the drawer”:
He was not the sharpest bulb in the drawer.
I like to say, variously, “an early bird is worth two in the bush” or, “let’s kill the early bird with two stones” or, “a bird in the hand gets the worm” and then move the conversation on immediately as though it were obvious what I meant and it requires no explanation, and this is why no one at work likes me.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.