Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A list of metaphors in the English language organised alphabetically by type. A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels".
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
For example, in Saki's "The Interlopers", two men engaged in a generational feud become trapped beneath a fallen tree in a storm: "Ulrich von Gradwitz found himself stretched on the ground, one arm numb beneath him and the other held almost as helplessly in a tight tangle of forked branches, while both legs were pinned beneath the fallen mass ...
For example, the phrase, "John, my best friend" uses the scheme known as apposition. Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men").
In cognitive linguistics, the invariance principle is a simple attempt to explain similarities and differences between how an idea is understood in "ordinary" usage, and how it is understood when used as a conceptual metaphor. Kövecses (2002: 102) provides the following examples based on the semantics of the English verb to give: She gave him ...
In fact the word "horror" comes from a Latin word meaning "to bristle with fear." Horripilation is the technical term for goosebumps. They got their name because they look like the skin of a ...
For example, the Arabic phrase في نفس المركب (fi nafs al-markeb) is translated as "in the same boat", and it carries the same figurative meaning as the equivalent idiom in English. Another example would be the Japanese yojijukugo 一石二鳥 (isseki ni chō), which is translated as "one stone, two birds". This is, of course ...
Allegory – A sustained metaphor continued through whole sentences or even through a whole discourse. For example, "The ship of state has sailed through rougher storms than the tempest of these lobbyists." Catachresis – A metaphor that is or can be a stretch for an audience to catch on to. Catachreses can be subjective; some people may find ...