Metaphor

Metaphor (Gr. metaphora, 'a transference'), a figure of speech by means of which one thing is put for another which it only resembles. Thus, the Psalmist speaks of God's law as being 'a light to his feet and a lamp to his path.' The metaphor is therefore a kind of comparison implied but not formally expressed, in which the speaker or writer, casting aside the circumlocution of the ordinary similitude, seeks to attain his end at once, by boldly identifying his illustration with the thing illustrated. It is thus of necessity, when well conceived and expressed, graphic and striking in the highest degree, and has been a favourite figure with poets and orators, and the makers of proverbs, in all ages. Even in ordinary language the meanings of words are in great part metaphors; as when we speak of an acute intellect, or a bold promontory. The metaphor is false if the simile involved cannot be intelligibly evolved from it; and, to avoid what are often called mixed metaphors, it is well that the implicit simile should be conceived objectively, as in a picture. Such cases of confusion as Cromwell's 'God has kindled a seed in this nation' are obvious enough, but most often the mixed metaphor is wrapped up in a cloud of rhetoric, as in De Quincey's sentence: 'The very recognition of these or any of them by the jurisprudence of a nation is a mortal wound to the very keystone upon which the whole vast arch of morality reposes.' Ruskin in his Præterita, describing Rogers's cold reception of him as a boy, says: 'The cultivation of germinating genius was never held by Mr Rogers to be an industry altogether delectable to genius in its zenith.'