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What is a Dead Metaphor?

Examples of Dead Metaphors

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From https://agoodlibrary.com/what-is-dead-metaphor-definition-examples/:

What is Dead Metaphor? A Simple Explanation!

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• Jui Shirvalkar
• December 28, 2020

Metaphors are one of the most loved and used expressions not just by great writers but by us too. Therefore, when we hear about ‘Dead Metaphors’, it kind of creates a dreary picture in front of our eyes. 

So, what is Dead Metaphor? Dead metaphor (a.k.a. Frozen or Historical Metaphor) is a figure of speech that has been used so excessively & repeatedly over time that it lost its link to the imagination or picture it was originally supposed to create in our minds. They lose their figurative meaning and imagery. Their conventional meaning becomes the actual meaning over time. Therefore, we can understand the implied meaning without knowing where it came from. 

Dead Metaphors are actually much simpler than mentioned above. We hear them every day. In fact, we use them every day unknowingly. In this article, I have tried to explain the concept of “Dead Metaphors” in the simplest way I could. 

What is Dead Metaphor?

Have you ever come across a phrase that means one thing literally and the whole other thing figuratively/metaphorically? One is the conventional one, and the other is the original meaning of the term. You must have. Sometimes, we don’t even know why we use those phrases and where they come from. Chances are you are using what we call ‘Dead Metaphors’. 

For example, “Fly off the Handle”. Conventionally, we use this phrase when someone loses their temper – like they are exploding with anger all of sudden. But this has no relation with “flying” or “handle” or anything literal. We have no idea where this phrase comes from and why people started associating it with losing one’s temper. This figure of speech has been used so much that now their meaning is literally ‘dead’. No one knows where they came from or the situations in which they were created. But everyone knows what they mean. In fact, it becomes so common that people don’t even recognize it as a Metaphor.

This happens because of Semantic Shift. The word ‘Semantic’ refers to the ‘meaning’ of a word. So, Semantic Shift means as we progressed, usage of language, especially words, evolved over time. This shift involved “Literalization of Metaphors”.

This is best explained in the book Continuity and Change in the Rhetoric of the Moral Majority By David Snowball.

He says,

“Metaphors do not, however, last forever. Since this “energetic” function seems to be a key element of metaphor, we may say that an expression that has lost its ability to excite has lost its metaphorical character. Such a phrase will not necessarily pass out of common usage, but simply become part of the everyday, literal elements of the language.”

– Continuity and Change in the Rhetoric of the Moral Majority By David Snowball

Many scholarly fellows have talked about this in their works like “Rorty on the literalization of metaphor” by Tony Edwards and “The Death of Dead Metaphor” by George Lakoff

The trick to determining whether a dead metaphor is relevant is if you could infer the meaning of the phrase without having encountered it before in any variation. Many times, dead metaphors are simply idiomatic statements or figures of speech that are irrelevant in today’s age. 

How to use Dead Metaphors in a Sentence?

Here are some simple examples of dead metaphors and their usage:

Dead Metaphor	Conventional Meaning	Usage in a sentence
Fly off the Handle	Used when someone loses their temper – like they are exploding with anger all of sudden	After listening to that news, she just flew off the handle.
Brand new	New, latest	Her company just got a brand new computer. It’s state of the art.
Go belly up	Go broke or bankrupt	She put all her money in that scammy investment scheme and now she is about to go belly up.
Deadline	Time limit	I don’t think I will be able to finish this paper before the deadline.
Falling head-over-heels in love	To be completely in love with someone typically in a romantic way	Oh, Romeo had fallen head over heels in love with Juliet.
Time is running out	To have less or no more time to finish a task	Get him admitted to a hospital ASAP! Time is running out.
Groundbreaking	Innovative	Sheldon and Leonard’s research was groundbreaking!

Dead Metaphor vs. Live Metaphors 

Live metaphors are also called original metaphors because they continue to have an association with the original intended meaning of the metaphor. An example of this is ‘man of the match’, ‘to the moon and back’, etc. Here to the moon and back means traveling a great distance and man of the match means someone important in an event. 

Literary definitions put dead metaphors and clichés into the same category. Their origination is easily forgotten, and the conventional meaning can take on a different note altogether. Only the social context of a dead metaphor can bridge this gap. Examples of dead metaphors are ‘raining cats and dogs’, and ‘a heart of gold’. Nobody saw it rain cats and dogs, no one has a literal heart of gold, but someone in the past started using this term and now they are super popular.  

Dead Metaphor vs. Clichés

Dead Metaphors	clichés
Dead metaphors may be clichés	Not all clichés are dead metaphors
Dead Metaphors lose their literal meaning and absorb the new conventional meaning as a result of being overused.	clichés lose their impact as a result of being overused.
For example, When a boss tells their employees, “This was the agenda. Let’s dive in.” Their employees don’t think of a pool or a diver or water – not even for a second. “Dive in” = “Let’s begin and go deeper” has become so common, that it’s now a dictionary meaning.	Examples, as shiny as a diamond. As white as snow back from the dead can of worms

Takeaway

Dead metaphors are mostly figures of speech that have contextually become the go-to terms to use to describe a certain intensity. Samuel Guttenpla says that dead metaphors cease to be metaphors. However, they cannot lose their metaphorical meaning, and so remain to be in use throughout history for the meaning that people have annotated to it. 

From https://examples.yourdictionary.com/reference/examples/examples-of-dead-metaphors.html:

Dead Metaphor Examples

To get a better grasp on this figure of speech, take a look at these examples of dead metaphors. You might not have even realized they were originally metaphors at all!

• Body of an essay: Here the structure of an essay is compared to that of human anatomy, and so the “body” of an essay is the main part of the essay. Most people don’t think of the human form when talking about the body of an essay.
• Leg of a trip: While this might sound like it relates back to the human body too, the original term is derived from the context of sailing. Each “leg” was a run made by a ship on a single tack. Now legs of a trip are more commonly applied to flights and other parts of a journey.
• Hands of a clock: The human anatomy returns for this metaphor. The “face” of the clock has a pair of “hands” to show the time, but most people don’t imagine the actual visage of a human being in this context any more.
• Time is running out: When you say that time is running out, it means that you almost don’t have enough time to do the thing you need to do. The original metaphor referred to the sand in an hourglass, so time (as measured by the sand) would literally run out of the top bulb into the bottom.
• Deadline: While everyone understands this to mean when something is due, a deadline originally referred to the line around the perimeter of a prison wherein a prisoner would be shot if they went beyond it.
• Brand new: The dead metaphor originated from a brand or firebrand, a piece of wood taken fresh from the fire.
• Go belly up: A business that has gone belly up has failed and closed for good. The term derives from what happens when a fish dies, turning belly up and floating to the top.
• Foot of the bed: The human body is used for many metaphors and this is just another example. The lowest point of something is often referred to as the foot.
• Groundbreaking: While a shovel digging into the earth is literally breaking the ground, the dead metaphor is also used in a figurative sense, even if the imagery of digging into soil is no longer pictured.
• World wide web: The connotation of this term is derived from that of a spider’s web, but the term has been so overused that “the web” is easily understood as relating to the internet and not the arachnid.
• Tough: Fabrics and meats can be literally tough, but something that is difficult to do (an abstract idea) can also be described as tough.
• A laughing stock: This relates to the stocks of old in which people would be locked up for the purpose of torture or punishment. These stocks are where the ankles and wrists would be trapped in small holes between two boards. This archaic form of punishment isn’t used anymore and, consequently, the connection has faded.

Historical Metaphors and Everyday Idioms

Part of the reason why dead metaphors are also known as historical metaphors is that their imagery is often based on historical context. Over time, these can evolve into everyday idioms with little connection to the original visual they were meant to conjure up.

• Batten down the hatches: Originally a nautical term meant to secure a ship’s hatches in preparation for a storm, the modern idiom is more about preparing for an upcoming crisis or challenge.
• Can’t hold a candle: Today, if you say that you can’t hold a candle to someone, you’re saying that you are vastly inferior to that person in terms of skill or talent. The original metaphor referred to apprentices who used to hold candles up for their masters to see what they were working on. If you’re not even good enough to hold up the candle, you are nowhere near in the same league.
• Nip it in the bud: To nip something in the bud is to stop or suppress it at a very early stage. The metaphor references snipping a flower bud before it has the opportunity to bloom.
• Flying off the handle: If someone is flying off the handle, it means they have lost their sense of self-control, like an axe blade head flung off its handle.
• Green with envy: This term was originally derived from “green-eyed monster,” an expression created by Shakespeare. Most people are unaware of the connection to the Bard.
• In the same boat: If you are in the same boat as someone, it means you are facing a similar set of circumstances or undergoing the same challenging situation. The metaphor refers to literally being in the same boat with someone because you can’t get off the boat and you’ll face the same fate as the other person.
• Curb your spending: This common idiom means to check or restrain spending. It’s derived from the strap, called a curb, that passes under the lower jaw of a horse and works with the bit to restrain the horse.
• Champing at the bit: Sometimes written incorrectly as “chomping” at the bit, this idiom refers to the “bit” that goes in a horse’s mouth for horse racing. An unsettled, impatient or anxious horse may chew on the bit before a race, though few people would picture a gnawing horse when using this expression.

From https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/18/george-orwell-writing-politics-and-the-english-language/:

George Orwell on Writing and the Four Questions Great Writers Must Ask Themselves

“By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.”

By Maria Popova

George Orwell (June 25, 1903–January 21, 1950) was a man of unflinching idealism who made no apologies for making his convictions clear, be they about the ethics of journalism, the universal motives of writing, or the golden rules for making tea — but never more so than in his now-legendary essay “Politics and the English Language,” which belongs among history’s best advice on writing. Originally published in 1946, Orwell’s masterwork of clarity and conviction is newly published in Insurrections of the Mind: 100 Years of Politics and Culture in America (public library) — an altogether magnificent “intellectual biography” of contemporary thought celebrating the 100th anniversary of The New Republic with a selection of more than fifty timeless, timely essays from such formidable minds as Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, John Dewey, Andrew Sullivan, and Zadie Smith.

Decades later, Orwell’s essay endures as a spectacular guide to writing well — an increasingly urgent reminder that language is first and foremost a tool of thought which, when misused or trivialized, does a tremendous cultural disservice to both reader and writer. Much like clichés poison language through their contagiousness, Orwell argues that our carelessness with the written word is propagated, in a meme-like fashion, by our relinquishing of deliberate thought in favor of lazy, automatic replication. His “catalogue of swindles and perversions” remains a remarkable clarion call for mindfulness in writing.

Orwell opens with a characteristically curmudgeonly lament, all the timelier in our age of alleged distaste for longform writing:

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to airplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Noting that the decline of language isn’t “due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer” but, rather, has deeper political and economic causes, Orwell nonetheless offers the optimistic assurance that this downturn is reversible. Such a turnaround, he argues, hinges on our collective ability to uproot the “bad habits which spread by imitation,” an act of personal and political responsibility for each of us. Citing several passages as examples of such perilous abuse of language, he points to the two qualities they have in common — “staleness of imagery” and “lack of precision” — and lists the most prevalent of the “bad habits” responsible for this “mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence” that poisons the English language:

1. Dying metaphors: A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a “rift,” for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying.
2. Operators, Or verbal false limbs:These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de-formations, and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, the fact that, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved from anti-climax by such refunding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, etc.
3. Pretentious diction:Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual basic, primary, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on anarchaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, trident, sword, shield, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, status quo, gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g. and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, clandestine, subaqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, lackeys, flunkey, mad dog. White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words and phrases translated from Russian, German or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.
4. Meaningless words: In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, “The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality,” while another writes, “The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness,” the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.” The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: Consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot. The Soviet Press is the freest in the world. The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with the intent to deceive. Others words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Many decades before our era of listicles, formulaic BuzzWorthy headlines, and the sort of cliché-laden articles that result from a factory-farming model of online journalism, Orwell follows his morphology of misuses with a timely admonition:

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit.

His most salient point, however, is a vivid testament to what modern psychology now knows about metaphorical thinking as conduit of an active imagination:

By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images dash … it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking.

Orwell concludes with a practical checklist of strategies for avoiding such mindless momentum of thought and the stale writing it produces:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even yourself.