I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like
A Comprehensive Compilation of History's Greatest Analogies, Metaphors, and Similes
To my very special grandson
Ryan Matthew Wood,
who at the age of eight
already knows about
chiasmus
and
oxymoronica
and will soon be learning about
analogies
,
metaphors
, and
similes
T
he sentence you are reading at this very moment is an example of
prose
(the word comes from the Latin
prosa
, meaning “straightforward”). Prose is the language people generally use to transmit information and express ideas. Closely resembling the patterns of everyday speech, prose is the kind of writing typically found in books, newspapers, and magazines. These are examples:
Prose and poetry are two methods
people can use to express ideas.
A committee is a questionable mechanism
for making decisions or solving problems.
Adolescence is a time of great turmoil.
Every now and then, though, prose is spiced up and becomes more fanciful:
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Prose is to poetry as walking is to dancing.
PAUL VALÃRY
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
BARNETT COCKS
Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness.
ARTHUR KOESTLER
In the first set of observations, the prose is straightforward but
prosaic
, meaning it lacks imagination and even borders on dull. In the second set, the prose is enhanced by
analogies
,
metaphors
, and
similes,
a trio of extremely valuable tools at the disposal of writers, orators, and poets. With the assistance of these three stylistic devices, ordinary language is elevated, often to an extraordinary degree. This is undoubtedly what the nineteenth-century American journalist and poet William Cullen Bryant had in mind when he wrote:
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Eloquence is the poetry of prose.
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This book will celebrate history's most spectacular examples of
poetic prose
âall constructed by the use of analogies, metaphors, and similes. Let's begin by meeting the key players.
ANALOGY
From the dawn of civilization, human beings have tried to understand one thing by relating it to something else. This approachâcalled analogical thinkingâhas been extremely helpful as people try to make sense out of a world that can often seem confusing or even incomprehensible.
Formally, an
analogy
is an attempt to state a relationship between two things that don't initially appear to have much in common (the word derives from the Greek word
analogia
, formally meaning a “proportionate” relationship between two pairs of things). In what may be the oldest analogy ever recorded, from around 1350 B.C., the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton was said to have observed:
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As the moon retains her nature,
though darkness spread itself before her face as a curtain,
so the Soul remains perfect
even in the bosom of the fool.
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In this ancient observation, the pharaoh was drawing an analogy between the moon hidden behind a curtain of darkness and a soul hidden behind a curtain of foolishness. Both continue to exist, he maintains, even when they cannot be seen. For many centuries, analogies have been used to instruct people and to dispense moral lessons. In this case, the ethical principle embedded in the analogy might be expressed this way: don't be too quick to shun or reject people, for behind all foolish or inappropriate actions there exists a perfect soul within.
While analogical thinking goes back to the oldest days of antiquity, people thinking about analogies these days are likely to recall those peculiar and often perplexing constructions that have long been a staple of intelligence tests and scholastic aptitude tests. The format will probably be familiar to you:
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illness : life :: (blank) : iron
a. steel b. blade c. forge d. rust
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Following a convention going back to ancient times, the analogy is read this way:
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“Illness is to life as (blank) is to iron.”
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The task here is to figure out which one of the four multiple-choice options bears the same relationship to iron as illness does to life. After a moment's thought, the answer is easily reasoned out. Just as illness can threaten or end a life, rust can threaten or destroy iron.
In the fourth century B.C., the Greek philosopher Antisthenes found
another aspect of the human experience that was analogous to iron and rust:
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As iron is eaten away by rust,
so the envious are consumed by their own passion.
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Rather than simply assert that envy is a destructive passion, Antisthenes begins by taking a phenomenon that is well knownâthe damaging effect of rust on ironâand relates it to something not so familiarâthe damaging effect of envy on people. By expressing his thought in an analogy, he made it very easy for people to forge a mental picture of the slow, corrosive process whereby one thing gradually eats away and eventually destroys something else.
People who say “Let me offer an analogy” are trying to explain one thing by relating it to something else. The entry on analogy in
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
explains it this way:
Illustration of an idea by means of a more familiar idea that is similar or parallel to it, and thus said to be analogous to it.
Structurally, analogies are often constructed in the
A is to B as C is to D
format:
Reading is to the mind, | As cold waters to a thirsty soul, |
As soap is to the body, | What garlic is to salad, |
Sometimes the format is varied slightly, and the intention shifts from the serious to the humorous:
Â
The murals in restaurants are
on a par with the food in museums.
PETER DE VRIES
And sometimes an additional explanation is appended after the formal analogy, just to make sure the point is understood:
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Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark.
You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.
STUART H. BRITT
Al Capone was to crime what J. P. Morgan was to Wall Street,
the first man to exert national influence over his trade.
ANDREW SINCLAIR
Analogies form the basis for much of the thinking people do about life. When we encounter something new and unfamiliarâor try to make sense out of something that is not well understoodâwe often benefit from relating it to something else we know well. Sigmund Freud expressed it nicely:
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Analogies, it is true, decide nothing,
but they can make one feel more at home.
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In 2006, seventy-eight-year-old Harry Whittington was accidentally shot in the face by Vice President Dick Cheney in a celebrated hunting accident. When it became apparent that Whittington's wounds were not life threateningâand that he was expected to fully recoverâcountless jokes from comedians and late-night talk-show hosts filled the airwaves. I'm sure you recall some of them.
Whittington, it was soon learned, was an Austin attorney, a successful real-estate investor, and a long-time member of the Texas Republican party. Early in his career, when LBJ and the Democrats were in control of the Lone Star
State, Whittington was the only Republican serving on the board of the Texas Department of Corrections. As he learned more about the grim reality of incarceration, he made an unsettling discovery. Yes, prisons get criminals off the street, but they do a miserable job of rehabilitation and, ironically, may even stimulate further criminal behavior. He began to express his view this way:
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Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants.
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In his analogy between prison life and the world of horticulture, Whittington made a compelling pointâas greenhouses foster the growth of budding plants, prisons are excellent breeding grounds for future criminal behavior.
Whittington's observation illustrates an important point about analogiesâwhen they are well-crafted, they have a
ring of truth
to them. As a result, analogies have long been considered one of the best ways to communicate profound ideas. Henry David Thoreau was thinking along these lines when he wrote:
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All perception of truth is the perception of an analogy.
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Analogies have enjoyed a long and honored history in philosophical and political discourse, but they have also been favored by orators, writers, artists, actors, and humorists. When comedic actor Harvey Korman turned seventy-seven in 2004, he was asked if he was using the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. He replied:
Â
The idea of using Viagra at my age is like erecting
a brand-new flag pole in front of a condemned building.
Â
Similarly, out of all the complaints of bloated government spending and the questionable competence of our elected leaders, few can match the inspired analogy of P. J. O'Rourke in his 1991 classic,
Parliament of Whores:
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Giving money and power to government
is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
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Analogical phrasing is only one tool available to people interested in more eloquently expressing their ideas. Another deviceâand a close cousin to the analogyâis the
metaphor.
METAPHOR
If an analogy can be formatted as
A is to B as C is to D
, a metaphor is the flat assertion that
A is B
. Even though analogies and metaphors are constructed slightly differently, they share one essential featureâthey try to capture a key aspect of one thing by relating it to something else. In one of his many collections of aphorisms, the American writer Mason Cooley wrote:
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A skyscraper is a boast in glass and steel.
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Notice that Cooley does not suggest that a skyscraper is
like
a boastâwhich would make it a
simile
âhe maintains that it
is
a boast, fulfilling the
A is B
requirement and making it a metaphor. To demonstrate the close relationship between metaphors and analogies, notice how easy it is to transform the observation into an analogy:
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A skyscraper is in architecture as a boast is in interpersonal relations.
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I came across Cooley's observation some years ago, and now rarely visit a major American city without having it come to mind. This happens routinely with metaphorsâthe best ones take up permanent residence in our minds.
There is one other thing about the Cooley metaphor that may not be apparent. A skyscraper is a building, not a boast, so the statement is not literally true. All metaphors are violations of logic in the sense that they
assert that two different things are the same. In the fascinating world of human discourse, we make allowances for such flights of fancy by calling them
figuratively
true. Like
leaps of faith
in religion, when people believe things that cannot be proved, we make
leaps of logic
when we use metaphorsâwe say something is true, even when we know it is literally untrue or logically false. This shows up the following observations, which alsoâit should be notedâhelp us see familiar things in new ways:
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Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due.
W. R. INGE
Art is the sex of the imagination.
GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.
GLORIA STEINEM
In some metaphorical observations, the formal metaphor is not obvious:
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Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
PABLO PICASSO
Here, the formal
A is B
assertion is not explicitly stated. But it is clearly suggestedâ
art (is a liquid that) washes
. The observation also illustrates the difference between literal and figurative truth. In real life, art cannot wash anything. And a soul doesn't literally accumulate dust. But by imbuing art with the cleansing properties of water, Picasso offers a memorable metaphor. If you examine the observation closely, you can also discern the underlying analogyâ
as water is a cleanser for the body, art is a cleanser for the soul.
All the observations we have just seen are examples of prose, but none are prosaic. Some even rise to the level of eloquence described earlier as the
poetry of prose. And they all meet the definition of a
metaphor
, according to the
American Heritage Dictionary:
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in “a sea of troubles” or “All the world's a stage.”
The word
metaphor
made its first appearance in English in 1533. It derives from two Greek roots:
meta
, meaning “over, beyond” and
pheiren
, meaning “to carry, transfer.” The root sense of the word is to carry a word over and beyond its original meaning by applying it to something else (Aristotle said a metaphor was giving a thing a name that belonged to something else). And that is exactly what Shakespeare does in his famous passage from
As You Like It
: