Metaphor and Analogy - **In Title or Description**

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About Metaphor and Analogy - **In Title or Description**

My alliteration pool was so popular, I was thinking that I would try another pool based on a figure of speech. Well ... actually two parts of speech ... as it is sometimes very difficult to recognize the differences between metaphor and analogy. So ... why not include them both?

This will be a much more challenging group. The title and/or description of your submitted picture must be a metaphor or analogy representing the subject of the picture. The picture and the title/description must work in tandem to portray the idea. Titles that do not apply to the subject of the photo will not be accepted.

For you technical people out there, I have listed below some types of metaphor (source: Wikipedia)

* An extended metaphor, or conceit, sets up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. A quote from As you like it is a good example.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances; — (William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7)
The world is described as a stage and then men and women are subsidiary subjects that are further described in the same context.

* An epic or Homeric simile is an extended metaphor containing details about the vehicle that are not, in fact, necessary for the metaphoric purpose. This can be extended to humorous lengths, for instance: "This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you've got a moment, it's a twelve-storey crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying 'This Is a Large Crisis.'" (Black Adder)

* A mixed metaphor is one that leaps, in the course of a figure, to a second identification inconsistent with the first one. Example: "He stepped up to the plate and grabbed the bull by the horns," where two commonly used metaphors are confused to create a nonsensical image.

* A dead metaphor is one in which the sense of a transferred image is not present. Example: "to grasp a concept" or "to gather you've understood." Both of these phrases use a physical action as a metaphor for understanding (itself a metaphor), but in none of these cases do most speakers of English actually visualize the physical action. Dead metaphors, by definition, normally go unnoticed. Some people make a distinction between a "dead metaphor" whose origin most speakers are entirely unaware of (such as "to understand" meaning to get underneath a concept), and a dormant metaphor, whose metaphorical character people are aware of but rarely think about (such as "to break the ice"). Others, however, use dead metaphor for both of these concepts, and use it more generally as a way of describing metaphorical cliché.

* A synechdochic metaphor is one in which a small part of something is chosen to represent the whole so as to highlight certain elements of the whole. For example "a pair of ragged claws" reprents a crab in Elliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock. Describing the crab in this way gives it the attributes of sharpness and savagery normally associated with claws.

Other types of metaphor have been identified as well, though the nomenclatures are not as universally accepted:

* An active metaphor is one which by contrast to a dead metaphor, is not part of daily language and is noticeable as a metaphor. Example: "You are my sun."

* An absolute or paralogical metaphor (sometimes called an antimetaphor) is one in which there is no discernible point of resemblance between the idea and the image. Example: "The couch is the autobahn of the living room."

* An experiential or learning metaphor is an experience that allows one to learn about more than just that experience. Examples: Board-breaking is used in seminars as a metaphor for breaking through emotional boundaries and climbing Kilimanjaro is used as a metaphor for life in Eric Edmeades Adventure Seminars.

* A complex metaphor is one which mounts one identification on another. Example: "That throws some light on the question." Throwing light is a metaphor and there is no actual light.

* A compound or loose metaphor is one that catches the mind with several points of similarity. Example: "He has the wild stag's foot." This phrase suggests grace and speed as well as daring.

* An implicit metaphor is one in which the tenor is not specified but implied. Example: "Shut your trap!" Here, the mouth of the listener is the unspecified tenor.

* A submerged metaphor is one in which the vehicle is implied, or indicated by one aspect. Example: "my winged thought". Here, the audience must supply the image of the bird.

* A simple or tight metaphor is one in which there is but one point of resemblance between the tenor and the vehicle. Example: "Cool it". In this example, the vehicle, "cool", is a temperature and nothing else, so the tenor, "it", can only be grounded to the vehicle by one attribute.

* A root metaphor is the underlying worldview that shapes an individual's understanding of a situation. Examples would be understanding health as a mechanical process, or seeing life as the natural expression of an "ideal" form (e.g., the acorn that should grow into an oak tree.). A root metaphor is different from the previous types of metaphor in that it is not necessarily an explicit device in language, but a fundamental, often unconscious, assumption. Religion provides one common source of root metaphors, since birth, marriage, death and other universal life experiences can convey a very different meaning to different people, based on their level or type of religious conditioning or otherwise. For example, some religions see life as a single arrow pointing toward a future endpoint. Others see it as part of an endlessly repeating cycle. In his book World Hypotheses, the philosopher Stephen Pepper coined the term and proposed a theory of four ultimate root metaphors — formism, mechanism, organicism, contextualism.

* A conceptual metaphor is an underlying association that is systematic in both language and thought. For example in the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," the conceptual metaphor of "A Lifetime Is a Day" is repeatedly expressed and extended throughout the entire poem. The same conceptual metaphor is the key to solving the Riddle of the Sphinx: "What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at midday, and three in evening? — A man." Similar to root metaphors, conceptual metaphors are not only expressed in words, but are also habitual modes of thinking underlying many related metaphoric expressions. Because they both underlie more than just the surface metaphoric expression, root metaphors and conceptual metaphors are easily confused. For example: In the United States, both conservatives and liberals use 'family' metaphors for the national politics, though in different ways. Both types of usage would ultimately resolve to "organic" root metaphors in Pepper's nomenclature, while Lakoff would distinguish between several different varieties of the "A Nation Is A Family" metaphor.

* A dying metaphor is a derogatory term coined by George Orwell in his essay Politics and the English Language. Orwell defines a dying metaphor as a metaphor that isn't dead (dead metaphors are different, as they are treated like ordinary words), but has been worn out and is used because it saves people the trouble of inventing an original phrase for themselves. In short, a cliché. Example: Achilles' heel. Orwell suggests that writers scan their work for such dying forms that they have 'seen regularly before in print' and replace them with alternative language patterns.

The category of metaphor can be further considered to contain the following specialized subsets:

* allegory: An extended metaphor in which a story is told to illustrate an important attribute of the subject
* catachresis: A mixed metaphor (sometimes used by design and sometimes a rhetorical fault)
* parable: An extended metaphor told as an anecdote to illustrate or teach a moral lesson

types of metaphor (source: Wikipedia)