Metaphors, Part II

Last week’s post discussed metaphors, which are a “figure of speech.” Figures of speech are a device that uses language in a nonliteral way as a way of creating a mental picture or drawing an analogy. There are many such figures of speech, and most people recognize them when they see them, but don’t know necessarily them by name. You may know your metaphors from your similes, but do you know what a synechdoche is?

“He had lived through eighty winters,” for example, would be understood by most people as a poetic way of saying that the “he” in question was an old man, but not many would be able to name that particular figure of speech as a synechdoche [sin-ECK-doh-key].* The word is rather arcane, and, although Ms. Picky enjoys knowing it, it is a pleasure she realizes not many of her readers share. Not to worry; there will not be a test on synechdoches. Nevertheless, there are a couple of figures of speech that anyone who writes—or speaks—should be familiar with.

Metaphors and Similes

A metaphor uses an untruth to make a comparison and convey a strong similarity between two otherwise unlike things, as in this stanza from “Escape at Bedtime,” by Robert Louis Stevenson:

“The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,

And the star of the sailor, and Mars,

These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall


Would be half full of water and stars.”

In this case, the metaphor is in the last two lines. The untruth is that the pail, obviously, was not half full of stars; it was the sky that was full of stars. Nevertheless, because of the reflection of the stars in the dark water, it appeared as if there were stars in the water, and the metaphor conveys Stevenson’s own impression in a way that is far more effective than if he had said, “The water was sparkling because it reflected the stars.”

 A simile is like a metaphor, but it does not make the leap to an actual untruth; instead, it uses the work “like” to convey similarity, as in this Robert Burns fragment:

O My Love is like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June. . . .

(The simile used as an example by Ms. Picky’s ninth-grade English teacher was: “Her teeth are like stars; they come out at night.” Not poetic, perhaps, but memorable in its own way.)

Similes pretty much behave themselves; it’s the metaphors that can be tricky.

What to Watch Out for When Using Metaphors 

Mixing Them 

If one is going to exercise rhetorical or poetic license to create metaphors, then one should at least be consistent in using them. See what happens when you mix metaphors:

“The proposed bill was a crazy quilt 

of earmarks that he was determined 

to nip in the bud.”

The sentence uses three different and inconsistent metaphors, stretching the mind’s ability to leap from one mental picture to another:

“Crazy quilt” is a metaphor for a lot of unrelated things that have been put together in some way, like a patchwork of odd bits of leftover fabric.

“Earmark” is a metaphor used for a legislator’s way of directing funds toward his own pet projects, but, as we mentioned last week, it is actually a way of clipping or cutting the ear of an animal as a means of identification.

“Nip in the bud” is a metaphor derived from a gardener’s practice of preventing the spread of an undesirable plant or growth by cutting it before it has a chance to flower and reseed itself.

The writer of this sentence takes his readers first to the sewing room, then to the barnyard, and finally to the garden, all in one sentence!

Now look at the following sentence:

“The bill was a [crazy quilt] they had 

[stitched together] before the holiday recess.”

This sentence is effective, because its two metaphors are consistent.

Overdoing Them

Okay, you got it; you don't mix metaphors, but there’s one more danger: Don’t overdo them. Even when the metaphors are consistent, to “stitch together” more than two of them becomes problematic, because the listener becomes so distracted by trying to line up all the analogies that he loses the point the speaker or writer is trying to make:

“He wished that [by doing his homework] 

he could [eradicate] the episode from the voter’s minds, 

but it he was afraid it was [a blot on his copybook] 

in [indelible ink].”

More than two metaphors in a sentence or a paragraph, even when consistent, is too many. Metaphors and figures of speech are like jewelry. One or two pieces can be an enhancement to the wearer. More than that, and one notices the jewelry more than the wearer.


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*For the irrepressibly curious, a synechdoche is a figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole. In the example given, the man in question had obviously lived for eighty years, but saying “eighty winters” paints an immediate word picture of age, just as “seventeen springs” paints a picture of youth.

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