dead metaphor
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English
[edit]Noun
[edit]Examples |
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dead metaphor (plural dead metaphors)
- (linguistics) A former metaphor which has in effect lost its metaphorical status and become literal.
- 1980, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, chapter 27, in Metaphors We Live By:
- An objectivist might grant that digest an idea was once a metaphor, but he would claim that it is no longer metaphorical. For him it is a “dead metaphor,” one that has become conventionalized and has its own literal meaning.
- 2021, Meghan O'Gieblyn, chapter 1, in God, Human, Animal, Machine […] , →ISBN:
- It is meaningless to speak of the soul in the twenty-first century […] . It has become a dead metaphor, one of those words that survive in language long after a culture has lost faith in the concept, like an empty carapace that remains intact years after its animating organism has died.
Usage notes
[edit]- A metaphor that has become clichéd through overuse may be called stale rather than dead.
See also
[edit]Further reading
[edit]dead metaphor on Wikipedia.Wikipedia