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Recent Examples of dead metaphor
Many of our emotion terms are references to states of the body—we’re downcast, bent out of shape, head over heels, shaken up, down in the mouth—which have slowly rigidified into dead metaphor.
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Nikhil Krishnan, The New Yorker, 1 Aug. 2022
This shift reminds us that dead metaphors aren’t always terminally dead.
—Rob Nixon, Smithsonian, 23 Mar. 2018
Nikhil Krishnan, The New Yorker, 1 Aug. 2022
This shift reminds us that dead metaphors aren’t always terminally dead.
—Rob Nixon, Smithsonian, 23 Mar. 2018
Recent Examples of Synonyms for dead metaphor
Noun
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Rana recommends coming up with a secret code word to use with your family.Audrey Nguyen, NPR, 24 Dec. 2024
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The guidelines had the opposite effect, encouraging streamers to lead with the code words they’d been barred from: a push against standards meant to actually censor players.Megan Farokhmanesh, WIRED, 20 Dec. 2024
Noun
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Collision, as used by PST ART, is tech-bro speak, a euphemism, like the buzzword disruption, that promises the creation of new, exciting opportunities while minimizing the severity of moral quandaries and social ills.Michaëla de Lacaze Mohrmann, Artforum, 1 Jan. 2025
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For example, Walker explains to Juliette that people on the lower levels favor plain speaking over bureaucratic euphemisms.Noel Murray, Vulture, 15 Nov. 2024
Noun
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Additionally, the use of Cold War–era analogies—or even analogies from the war in Ukraine—might go out the window if the United States decided to deploy troops to defend Taiwan.Michael Poznansky, Foreign Affairs, 3 Jan. 2025
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Newton used the analogy of a cannonball, fired horizontally, following a similar curve back down to the ground.Keith Cooper, Space.com, 13 Jan. 2025
Noun
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In many ways, the orchestra is the perfect metaphor for the relationship between the individual and society.The Learning Network, New York Times, 10 Jan. 2025
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What Is ‘Vengeance Most Fowl’ About? Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is a parable for the overreach of technology into our lives, using Wallace’s clunky inventions as a metaphor for smartphones, tablets and generative AI.Dani Di Placido, Forbes, 9 Jan. 2025
Noun
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The simile is novel and yet the sort of thing a young woman would think; there is assonance and consonance seesawing across the sentence, which is slow and gorgeous rather than quick and thrilling.Joanna Biggs, Harper's Magazine, 2 Feb. 2024
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These circumstances conducive to socialization are most obviously available for young people on athletic teams, but the sports simile is easily applicable to young people in marching band, theater productions, student council, volunteer and community settings and the robotics club.Jeff Nelligan, Baltimore Sun, 4 Dec. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Dead metaphor.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dead%20metaphor. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.
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