OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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By Tim Jensen, Oregon State University Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Department Chair
20 May 2019
Metaphor is a comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated.
With metaphor, the qualities of one thing are figuratively carried over to another. When I say, “Dude, I’m drowning in work,” I’m using qualities associated with one thing—the urgency and helplessness of drowning—to convey meaning for another thing—the work I’ve got to do.
Metaphors are everywhere: He’s a couch potato. She’s got a heart of gold. That party was the bomb. Money is the root of all evil.
Swear words and slang are often metaphorical. Take bullsh** for example.
Wait, can I say bullsh**?
Why not? It’s a perfect example of how metaphors are everywhere.
No? Well, that’s bullsh**.
By bringing two unrelated elements into a comparison, metaphors can add creativity and clarity to writing and everyday speech, allowing us to see things from different angles and in a new light. Take this sentence by H.P. Lovecraft, which uses vivid imagery to suggest the limits of our knowledge: “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
In rhetorical and literary analysis, we often look at how authors use metaphors in ways that go beyond short phrases. An extended metaphor is one that goes on for several sentences. If a metaphor is extended across an entire piece of writing, it’s called a controlling metaphor.
In the novel Invisible Man, for example, Ralph Ellison extends the metaphor of invisibility to describe how black men and women are often overlooked in American society, pushed to the margins and into the shadows.
So, metaphors aren’t just some stylistic flourish that we use at the sentence level. In fact, according to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, our very thought—the conceptual systems we use to think and act—are fundamentally metaphorical. They’re intrinsic to thinking, which is why it’s wise to pay attention to how they’re used.
Metaphors: Equipment for living. Which is a metaphor… okay, I’ll stop now.
Want to cite this?
MLA Citation: Jensen, Tim. "What is a Metaphor?" Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms, 20 May 2019, Oregon State University, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-metaphor. Accessed [insert date].
Further Resources for Teachers & Students:
Click HERE for a free (CC BY-NC) 'Dead Metaphor' activity for high school and college students.
For an extended discussion of the two components of a metaphorical comparison, see our "What are Vehicles and Tenors?" lesson.
For a discussion of the differences between simile and metaphor, see our "What is a Simile?" lesson.
