Metaphor

metaphor [Gr.,=transfer], in rhetoric, a figure of speech in which one class of things is referred to as if it belonged to another class. Whereas a simile states that A is like B, a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A. Some metaphors are explicit, like Shakespeare's line from As You Like It: "All the world's a stage." A metaphor can also be implicit, as in Shakespeare's Sonnet LXXIII, where old age is indicated by a description of autumn:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
  Where yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
  Bare ruined choirs, where once the sweet birds sang.

A dead metaphor, such as "the arm" of a chair, is one that has become so common that it is no longer considered a metaphor.

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metaphor

Figure of speech in which a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in “the ship plows the seas” or “a volley of oaths”). A metaphor is an implied comparison (as in “a marble brow”), in contrast to the explicit comparison of the simile (“a brow white as marble”). Metaphor is common at all levels of language and is fundamental in poetry, in which its varied functions range from merely noting a likeness to serving as a central concept and controlling image.

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metaphor

The derivation of metaphor means "to carry over." Thus the "desktop metaphor" as so often described means that the office desktop has been brought over and simulated on computers.

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metaphor

a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denote in order to imply a resemblance, for example he is a lion in battle

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Metaphor 

(1) A trope based on the principle of comparability and on the fact that words may have a double (or multiple) meaning. Thus, in the phrase “the pine trees raised their gold-glistening candles to the sky” (Gorky), the word “candles” designates two objects simultaneously: candles and tree trunks. The referential meaning of the metaphor, which is part of the context and forms the inner, hidden pattern of the metaphor’s semantic structure, denotes that which is being compared—in this instance, the tree trunks. The direct meaning of the metaphor, which contradicts the context and forms the metaphor’s external, visible structure, denotes that which is the means of comparison (the candles).

Thus, in a metaphor, both levels of meaning are merged. By contrast, in a simile the two levels are separated (for example, “trunks like candles”).

Any part of speech may be used metaphorically: a noun (”diamonds hung in the grass”); a genitive construction—that is, a metaphor plus a noun in the genitive case (“the colonnade of the forest”; “the bronze of muscles”); an adjective (”duck nose,” a metaphorical epithet); or a verb, including the participial form (“there, where sound the streams of Aragva and Kura, merging together, embracing like two sisters”).

There are several kinds of metaphor. In concrete metaphor, real objects compared metaphorically constitute “object pairs” whose common feature may be color or shape, for example. In logical metaphor the trope is an operation with cosubordinate concepts. Psychological metaphor is an association of concepts related to different spheres of perception, such as hearing, sight, and taste (for example, the synesthesia “a sour mood”). Semantics, grammar, and stylistics are used in linguistic metaphor. Literary theory and criticism considers metaphor a poetic technique and focases on its dependence on creative individuality, literary schools, and national culture.

Metaphor is used in everyday nonliterary speech (for example, “ass,” meaning fool), journalism and publicism (“labor’s watch”), popular science (salt referred to as “edible rock”), artistic speech in folklore (riddles and proverbs), and literature. In poetry the metaphor is particularly important. For example, in ten pages of V. V. Mayakovsky’s tragedy Vladimir Maiakovskii there are about 350 metaphors. Poetic metaphors, which are striking expressions of emotional states, can be understood on many levels and are often similar to symbols (for example, A. Blok’s “Over the bottomless gulf flies, gasping, the trotter into eternity”). Metaphors may be simple or complex, consisting of a series of phrases (for example, Gogol’s comparison of Russia to a “Troika, the Bird of a Troika”), paragraphs, or even chapters.

(2) The term “metaphor” also refers to the use of a word in its secondary meaning, which is related to the primary meaning by the principle of similarity: for example, “the nose of a rocket” (secondary) and “his nose turned red” (primary); the “field of gravitation” and “the field beyond the forest.” This usage, however, involves a designation, rather than the referential meaning or renaming found in the true metaphor. Only one meaning is intended, and the imagistic emotional effect is absent. Thus, it is perhaps better to call this phenomenon metaphorization.

REFERENCES

Zhirmunskii, V. “Poeziia Aleksandra Bloka.” In his book Voprosy teorii literatury. Leningrad, 1928.
Adrianova-Peretts, V. P. Ocherkipoeticheskogo stilia drevnei Rusi. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947.
Meilakh, B. “Metafora kak element khudozhestvennoi sistemy.” In his book Voprosy literatury i estetiki. Leningrad, 1958.
Poeticheskaia frazeologiia Pushkina. Moscow, 1969.
Levin, lu. I. “Russkaia metafora . …” Uch. zap. Tartus. gos. Un-ta, 1969, fasc. 236.
Korol’kov, V. “O vneiazykovom i vnutriiazykovom aspektakh issledovaniia metafory.” Uch. zap. MGPI Inostrannykh iazykov, 1971, vol. 58.
Foss, M. Symbol and Metaphor in Human Experience. Princeton, N. J., 1949.
Hester, M. B. The Meaning of Poetic Metaphor. The Hague-Paris, 1967.
Shibles, W. A. Metaphor: An Annotated Bibliography and History.
Whitewater, Wis., 1971.

V. I. KOROL’KOV