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Metaphorical   /mˌɛtəfˈɔrɪkəl/   Listen
Metaphorical

adjective
1.
Expressing one thing in terms normally denoting another.  Synonym: metaphoric.  "Metaphoric language"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Metaphorical" Quotes from Famous Books



... about this time, too, that I first saw the teeth and the claws of our metaphorical man-eater. That was during the conflict between Governor Waite and the Fire and Police Board of Denver. He had the appointment and removal of the members of this Board, under the law, and when they ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... Here we have at least an inkling of the hero's powers of discrimination, and his regard for the little niceties of life. We have also a beautiful metaphorical allusion to the postulate that "fingers were made before forks," an assertion respecting the truth of which some antiquarians have expressed a doubt. We are not prepared to decide as to the propriety of leaving the substantial of life and employing sweets and ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... the audiences, the scum of town populations, to which it is habitually addressed. Without the education of the late Henry Hunt, he has quite as much capacity and more tact, with the single exception, that when attempting to soar to the metaphorical he is apt to enact the ludicrous blunders of Astley's clown aping the affected pomposity of the master; as v.g. in the "demon rising from the Thames with an Act of Parliament in his hands." Mr Alderman Cobden is, withal, a very ostentatious declaimer about "great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... reference to the carriage of enemy goods, little more need be said, except to deprecate arguments founded upon the metaphorical statement that "a vessel is part of the territory covered by her flag," a statement which Lord Stowell found it necessary to meet by the assertion that a ship is a "mere movable." There can be no possible doubt of the right, under ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... upon a green cabbage leaf, and asks you in a voice of triumphant demonstration, where is the trace of concealment or disguise in that amiable but very inedible insect? Go to, Sir Critic, I will have none of you; I only use you for a metaphorical marionette to set up and knock down again, as Mr. Punch in the street show knocks down the policeman who comes to arrest him, and the grimy black personage of sulphurous antecedents who pops up with a fizz through the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... not do so in any case. How do I know whether the only use people may make of it (and that a metaphorical one) may not be to throw it at ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... were snakes spiritual and metaphorical. For, poking about where we had no business, Mary, the Tartars caught us, and tied us to their horses' tails, after giving me this scar across the cheek, and taught us to drink mares' milk, and to do a good deal of dirty work beside. So there ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... one figure. Metaphor was not allowed in the motto: a device faulty in this respect, represented a ball of crystal, the motto, from Plautus, Intus et in cute (The same within and without); crystal being devoid of skin (cutis), the expression was metaphorical. The introduction of negatives into the motto was considered good: as a sundial, with Ne aspiciatur non aspicitur (Unless looked upon—by the sun—it is not esteemed, or is of no use), a good device for a king's favourite; a flame of fire, with Nunquam deorsum (Never downwards); ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... drink, it meant study of the law, and the practise of good works. It was a saying among them—'In the time of the Messiah the Israelites will be fed by Him.' Nothing was more common in the schools and synagogs than the phrases of eating and drinking, in a metaphorical sense. 'Messiah is not likely to come to Israel,' said Hillel, 'for they have already eaten Him'—that is, greedily received His words—'in the days of Hezekiah.' A current conventionalism in the synagogs was that the just would 'eat the Shekinah.' ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... natural selection must be always more or less objectionable, as too highly charged with metaphor for purposes of science, there is nevertheless a natural selection which is open to no other objection than this, and which, when its metaphorical character is borne well in mind, may be used without serious risk of error, whereas natural selection from variations that are mainly fortuitous is chimerical as well as metaphorical. Both writers speak of ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... you dislike the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may have another if you choose, a metaphorical one,—close enough it seems to Christianity, and yet still absolutely distinct from it,—[Greek: *christos*]. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val d'Arno and Val di Nievole, which modern piety ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... that, being a very natural boy, who, save when at school, had led rather a solitary life, finding companionship in Tom Tallington and the grown-up denizens of the fen, Dick, who was by no means a model, turned sulky, and shrank within his metaphorical shell. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... that of making many books there is no end. No longer is any but the most confirmed writer suffered to spin out volume after volume in complacent ignorance of his readers' state of mind, for these victims of eye-strain and nerves turn upon the newest book, the metaphorical last straw on the camel's load, with the exasperated cry, Why? ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... off metaphorical fights For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor. A Fable ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... digging going on down in that swamp lot.' It required a lengthy series of geological arguments, with practical illustrations, to convince 'Squire Witherpee that the soil of East Hampton was somewhat feeble in the production of the precious metals—except, perhaps, in a metaphorical sense. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... investing with an ideal magnitude, the proportions of nature, is plainly, from what we observe in heroic poetry, painting, and sculpture, the soul itself of the superhuman and sublime. Of the justness of the metaphorical compliment implied in the delineation of the head, it is not for the author to speak; of its exquisiteness and delicacy, his sense is too strong for expression. The habitual pensiveness of the elevated eyebrows, mingled with the momentary gaiety of the ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... this canal, eloquently proclaiming the nature of the government by the close approximation of the powers of legislation and of punishment. The famous Bridge of Sighs is the material, and we might add the metaphorical, link between the two. The latter edifice stands on the quay, also, and though less lofty and spacious, in point of architectural beauty it is the superior structure, though the quaintness and unusual style of the palace are most apt ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... says he. 'First, a leeteral trumpet; second, a heestorical trumpet; third, a metaphorical trumpet; ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... threadbare word 'salvation,' which we all take it for granted that we understand, and which, like a well-worn coin, has been so passed from hand to hand that it scarcely remains legible—that well-worn word 'salvation' starts from a double metaphorical meaning. It means either—and is used for both—being healed or being made safe. In the one sense it is often employed in the Gospel narratives of our Lord's miracles, and it involves the metaphor of a sick man and his cure; in the other it involves the metaphor of a man in peril and his deliverance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... awaits each newcomer, hot and tempting. Trix eats hers with a relish. Trix possesses one of the chief elements of perpetual human happiness—an appetite that never fails, a digestion that, in her own metaphorical American language, "never goes back on her." But Edith looks fagged and spiritless. If people are to be supernaturally brilliant and bright, dashing and fascinating all night long, people must expect to pay the penalty next day, when lassitude and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... forehead to signify that the log in question was a metaphorical one, the log of memory. Eve had him again directly. She freed a claw. "So this is your log, is it?" cried she, tapping it as hard as she could; "well, it does sound like wood of some sort. Well, then, David, dear—you wretch, I mean—promise me not ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... purry kitten." Hall was heartily metaphorical, as he opened his pocket knife mechanically. "If you want to feel my claws, just ask me to vote for that damn thief! You'll think that I live in four different atmospheres. You and Bob Burroughs may be able to buy the rest of the Legislature, but you ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... (LANE) and suggesting that here is "a book for slippered ease." One is certainly warned not to expect anything very strenuous in its course, and indeed so placidly flow its waters that few, perhaps, but devotees of the craft will follow it to the end. Not but what there are metaphorical trout in it, too—enticing descriptions of bits of rivers, for instance—but on the whole they are easy-going fish that come to bank without showing very much sporting spirit. Here is no manual of precise information, though even old fishermen may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various

... maerchen. Again, the myth being a product of creative thought, existing in words only, as language changes, it alters through forgetfulness of the earlier meanings of words, through similarities in sounds deceiving the ear, or through a confusion of the literal with the metaphorical signification of the same word. The character of languages also favors or retards such changes, pliable and easily modified ones, such as those of the American Indians, and in a less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a developed ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... the point of one passage, not being contradicted by another directly, but only by implication, if the implication is clear, and the nature and context of the passage preclude metaphorical interpretation? (50) There are many such instances in the Bible, as we saw in Chap. II. (where we pointed out that the prophets held different and contradictory opinions), and also in Chaps. IX. and X., where we drew attention to the contradictions ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... all those peculiar doctrines of Herbert, which, undisguised, must have excited so much odium, were more or less developed and inculcated in this work; nevertheless they were necessarily so veiled by the highly spiritual and metaphorical language of the poet, that it required some previous acquaintance with the system enforced, to be able to detect and recognise the esoteric spirit of his Muse. The public read only the history of an ideal world and of creatures of exquisite beauty, told ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... the plain expression of the fact; Natural Selection is a metaphorical expression of it, and to a certain degree indirect and incorrect, since, even personifying Nature, she does not so much select special variations as exterminate the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... arithmetic, that one formula would express them both. All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of the words by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy. The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality. The Tree of ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... for Montague to imagine a tigress in Mrs. Winnie's conservatory; unless, indeed, one were willing to take the proposition in a metaphorical sense. There are wild creatures which sleep in the heart of man, and which growl now and then, and stir their tawny limbs, and cause one to start and turn cold. Mrs. Winnie wore a dress of filmy softness, trimmed with red flowers which paled beside her own intenser colouring. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... stole in upon me now; many tunes I had hummed again and again came back once more. I found myself repeating fragments of a hymn often sung by a dear Christian woman of Fairhaven when I was rebuilding the Spray. I was to hear once more and only once, in profound solemnity, the metaphorical hymn: ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... line has been described as Shakespearian. Its strength is derived from the force of the metaphorical personification. The boldness of the poetical construction is carried into the ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... are of a highly metaphorical and imaginative character, but they admit of being brought down to very plain facts, and they tell us the results in heart and mind of true faith and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... you prefer "burning" added to this "wave" metaphorical. The word "fiery pillar" was suggested by the "pillar of fire" in the book of Exodus, which went before the Israelites through the Red Sea. I once thought of saying "like Israel's pillar," and making it a simile, but I did not know,—the great temptation was leaving the epithet "fiery" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... (31-37) explains how some metaphorical expressions, seemingly implying that there is something different from Brahman, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... it and will it to be "not a sport, but a science." There is no sport here. Men killed like this are like men killed by plague or the eruption of a volcano. And, indeed, what else are they? They are victims of a diseased humanity of the eruption—literal and metaphorical—of its hidden fires. And wars will grow more and more like this. What can stop them and banish these scenes? Only the hate of hate, only the love that can redeem even such a sight as this when at last we remember that it is ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... and planois had not been used, the line might have been explained in a metaphorical instead of an absolute sense, as we say "WAYS and means," and "wanderings" for error and confusion. But they meant literally paths or roads, such as we tread with our feet; and wanderings, such as a man makes when he loses ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... paragraph, which may teach them how to preserve their Umbrellas, we may wish them a hearty farewell, hoping they may—long live to use these promoters of comfort and of health, and that they may always be as well shielded by fate from the metaphorical tempests of life, as they are from its physical storms ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster

... favour. A sufficient supply of food it almost takes for granted, if only it can once gain a sufficient ground-space. But other plants are competing with it, tooth and nail (if plants may be permitted by courtesy those metaphorical adjuncts), for their share of the soil, like crofters or socialists; every spare inch of earth is permeated and pervaded with matted fibres; and each is striving to withdraw from each the small modicum of moisture, mineral matter, and manure ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... but by the close concert and mutual interdependence of all its members. Therefore, when a few pages back, adopting the allegorical method, we used a fabulous god as a symbol of society, our language in reality was not in the least metaphorical: we only gave a name to the social being, an organic and synthetic unit. In the eyes of any one who has reflected upon the laws of labor and exchange (I disregard every other consideration), the reality, I ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... were reconciled. But it was a reconciliation without cordiality, without affection—a shaking of hands across a barrier of brass; and even this hand-shaking was a strictly metaphorical one, for they do not seem ever to have got beyond the interchange of a frigid bow. The opportunities, however, for observation were few. Soon after Randolph's arrival at Orven Hall, his father entered on a life of the most absolute seclusion. The mansion is an old three-storied one, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... it is going too far to say that 'swift' is colloquial only in metaphorical applications, we might speak of 'a swift bowler' without exciting surprise; but it is expedient to restore this word to general use, and avoid the use of fast for denotation of speed. 'To stand fast' is ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English

... too ludicrous an association of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when we find the man called, not the butcher, or that butcher, or butcher in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of Paris" (un beccaio di Parigi), and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... have shown, in spite of sceptics, that the common belief in an external world was reasonable. Brown in his lectures ridiculed Reid's claim. This 'mighty achievement,' the 'supposed overthrow of a great system,' was 'nothing more than the proof that certain phrases are metaphorical, which were intended by their authors to be understood only as metaphors.'[480] The theory was dead before Reid slew it, though the phrases were still used as a mere 'relic,' or survival of an obsolete doctrine.[481] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... conqueror of half the world, offers some curious particulars as to Gypsy life in the East at a remote period, will scarcely be considered out of place if reproduced here, and the following is as close a translation of it as the metaphorical style of the original ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... the actual agencies." "The words 'natural selection,' do not express a cause in the physical sense." "Kindred objections," he continues, "may be urged against the expression into which I was led when seeking to present the phenomena in literal terms rather than metaphorical terms—'the survival of the fittest.' In the working together of those many actions, internal and external, which determine the lives and deaths of organisms, we see nothing to which the words 'fitness' and 'unfitness' ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... it could be austere. Meanness, thanklessness, loquaciousness, jealousy, an unbecoming attire, evil thoughts, whatever is sensual, whatever is coarse, any promenade in mud actual or metaphorical, severely it condemned. Particularly was avarice censured. "There are many who do not like to give," Ormuzd, in the Vendidad, confided to Zarathrustra. The high god added: ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... be a query, the produce of which would be a negative quantity, which would probably prevent both Sir and Madam from reading either the nonsense or the good sense, the poetry or the prose, the simple or the sublime, of the rhapsodical, metaphorical, allegorical genius, Hugh Trevor: for in that case I suspect Hugh Trevor would find a more pleasant and profitable employment than the honourable trade of authorship. I have read books much, but men more, and think I can bring ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... day more and more an affair of chemistry. Science has now found what bids fair to be a very "glass of fashion"—not a metaphorical, but a literal glass, at least for lean people. The chemical properties of each color in the solar spectrum have long been known, and of late years it has also been discovered that plants may be made to thrive wonderfully in green-houses constructed of blue or violet panes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... could not be seen, for she was kneeling down a little distance away, assiduously fondling the silky ears of a highly-gratified red setter. And I realised then that some expressions are capable of a metaphorical as ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... I answered. Whereat Carlotta laughed, and bent forward to get a view of the victim. I austerely directed her attention to the stage. It was a metaphorical fly ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... their minds and can put those interests into words, they are equipped for the pretty and delicate game of talk. But a rare admixture of qualities is needed, and a subtle conversational effect, a sudden fancy, that throws a charming or a bizarre light on a subject, a power of pleasing metaphorical expression, the communication of an imaginative interest to a familiar topic—all these things are of the nature of instinctive art. I have heard well-informed and sensible people talk of a subject in a way that made me feel that I desired never to hear it mentioned again; but I have heard, on ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... to its fore-legs, which would have furnished the only proper points of attachment if the effigy had been of any very extraordinary size, he must have had a very small mountain in mind in making the comparison. Or, which is perhaps more probable, he used the term only in a vague metaphorical sense, as we do now when we speak of the waves of the ocean as running mountain high, when it is well ascertained that the crests of the billows, even in the most violent and most protracted storms, never rise more than twenty feet above ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... in the analysis of myths, as not only were the names of the divinities and of localities expressed in terms in the highest degree metaphorical, but they were at times obscured by an affected pronunciation, devised ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... for each lesson, exerted himself with extraordinary conscientiousness and absolute lack of success: he was a dreamer, a bookworm, and a mystic; he spoke in a dull, hesitating voice, used obscure and roundabout expressions, metaphorical by preference, and was shy even of his son, whom he loved passionately. It was not surprising that his son was simply bewildered at his lessons, and did not advance in the least. The old man (he was almost fifty, he had married late in life) surmised at last that things ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... Act regulating our commerce, of which I complain. An export duty, which could not be laid in Charleston because forbidden by our Constitution, is laid in London, or in British ports." It was literally, and in no metaphorical sense, the reimposition of colonial regulation, to increase the revenues of Great Britain by reconstituting her the entrepot of commerce between America and Europe. "The Orders in Council," wrote John Quincy Adams in a public letter, "if submitted to, would have degraded us ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... natural history who speak with most knowledge. That Darwin regarded war as an insignificant or even non-existent part of natural selection must be clear to all who have read his books. He was careful to state that he used the term "struggle for existence" in a "metaphorical sense," and the dominant factors in the struggle for existence, as Darwin understood it, were natural suitability to the organic and inorganic environment and the capacity for adaptation to circumstances; one species flourishes while a less efficient species living alongside ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... of sensorial photism shade off into what are evidently only metaphorical accounts of the sense of new spiritual illumination, as, for instance, in Brainerd's statement: "As I was walking in a thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the apprehension of my soul. I do not mean any external ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... first:" he has, nevertheless, "a few things against them,"—especially "suffering that woman Jezebel to teach." Is this "woman Jezebel" to be taken in a literal or figurative sense? Analogy seems to require a metaphorical sense. If, in the preceding epistle, "Balaam" is not to be understood literally and personally, but figuratively and representatively, so Jezebel represents an individual, or rather as that other woman, (ch. xvii. 4.) a faction or sect, who propagated destructive heresy. Jezebel was daughter ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... economic positions are already possessed. History offers as the classic illustration the European Jew. The stranger is by his very nature no landowner—in saying which, land is taken not merely in a physical sense but also in a metaphorical one of a permanent and a substantial existence, which is fixed, if not in space, then at least in an ideal position within the social order. The special sociological characteristics of the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... flood-gates of heaven were opened and down came the rain. I had heard a great deal, at one time and another, about the violence of tropical rainstorms, but this exceeded far beyond all bounds the utmost that I had thereby been led to anticipate. It came, not in drops or sheets, or even the metaphorical "buckets-full," but in an absolute deluge of such volume that not only were we drenched to the skin in a single instant, but almost before I was aware of it the water had risen in the bottom of the canoe to a depth of at least four inches. I was actually compelled ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... moreover, in the present case, embittered with certain circumstances, which being mixed with sweeter ingredients, tended altogether to compose a draught that might be termed bitter-sweet; than which, as nothing can be more disagreeable to the palate, so nothing, in the metaphorical sense, can be so ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... against metaphorical rocks in the nineteenth century," continued Raeburn. "I remember wondering why the old clerk in my father's church always sung that verse lustily; but you see we have exactly the same spirit now, only in a more civilized form, barbarity changed to polite cruelty, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... the Lord,' the difficulty is explained by the parallel case of Hymenaeus and Philetus, who taught that 'the resurrection had already taken place,' [120:2] or in other words, that all such terms must be understood in a metaphorical sense as applying to the spiritual change, the new birth or resuscitation of the believer in the present world'. Thus everything hangs together. But such teaching is altogether foreign to Marcion. He did indeed deny the resurrection of the flesh, and the future body of the redeemed [120:4]. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... pouring; and these words have their primary or proper, secondary or tropical meanings, all of which must be differentiated. The primary or proper meaning has reference to specific acts, the secondary meaning refers to things done by means of these specific acts, while the tropical or metaphorical meaning departs from the specific meaning of the words and therefore cannot have reference to the specific outward acts indicated by the words. For this reason it is a law of language, recognized by all scholars, that you must give a word its primary or proper meaning when ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... of that metaphorical proverb which tells us that "truth lies at the bottom of a well." Perhaps these people thought that the only way to find truth in the well was to drown oneself. But on whatever thin theoretic basis, the type and period of George Gissing ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... an every-day word in Canada and the United States. It is a metaphorical use of felon, a fell villain. A whitlow was called in Latin furunculus, "a little theefe; a sore in the bodie called a fellon" (Cooper), whence Fr. furoncle, or froncle, "the hot and hard bumpe, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... professor for a shark. But they can hardly be mistaken in attributing to the respectable professor what he himself considers as his claims to respect. And as the imagery about the shark may be too metaphorical or almost mythological, there is not the smallest difficulty in stating in plain words what the Arabs fear in the Jews. They fear, in exact terms, their knowledge and their experience and their money. The Arabs fear exactly the three things ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... any of the others, so far as sustained interest is concerned.... The rich, suggestive, highly metaphorical the M. I. style.... A marvelous example of Mr. De Morgan's inexhaustible fecundity of invention.... Shines as a romance quite as much as 'Joseph Vance' does among ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... different pens, evidently in the hands of individuals of less wrongheadedness and acrimony of feeling than the Parisian Printer. Mons. Crapelet has prefixed a Preface to his labours, in which he tells the world, that, using my more favourite metaphorical style of expression, "a CRUSADE has risen ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... at which women are employed is that of keeping cloth running evenly through a tentering machine. The machine holds on tenter hooks—the hooks of the metaphorical reference—the damp cloth brought from the process of bleaching, and rolls it through evenly into a drier, where it slips off. There are two kinds of tentering machines. At one kind two girls sit, each watching an edge of the cloth and keeping it straight ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... copious illustrations, various colors were used freely with apparent significance, whereas, in fact, the general rule in regard to the birch-bark rolls was that they were never colored at all; indeed, the bark was not adapted to coloration. The metaphorical coloring was also used by him in a manner which, to any thorough student of the Indian philosophy and religion, seems absurd. Metaphysical expressions are attached to some of the devices, or, as he calls them, symbols, which, could never have been entertained by a people in the stage ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... expressed is beautiful, we demand certain formal and material elements of beauty. A telegram may convey the very apex of felicity, yet be not at all felicitous in its form or in the music of its words. If in such cases, we speak of beauty, the term is altogether metaphorical and imputed; we are using it in the same analogical sense as when we speak of a "beautiful operation" or a "beautiful deed"; it is a moral rather than an aesthetic term. We may find the letter of a friend expressive of the gentleness, fidelity, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... communication from Big Bluff were events of no small importance, and were celebrated on the same day. The double occasion overtaxing even the fluent rhetoric of the editor of the "Star" left him struggling in the metaphorical difficulties of a Pactolian Spring, which he had rashly turned into the Ditch, and obliged him to transfer the onerous duty of writing the editorial on the Big Bluff Extension to the hands of the Honorable Abner Dean, Assemblyman from Angel's. The loss of the Honorable ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... his naughty old woman, who in her turn has been transformed by popular tradition into the naughty girl Silver-hair. Mr. Nutt ingeniously suggests that Southey heard the story told of an old vixen, and mistook the rustic name of a female fox for the metaphorical application to women of fox-like temper. Mrs. H.'s version to my mind has all the marks of priority. It is throughout an animal tale, the touch at the end of the shaking the paws and the name Scrapefoot are too volkstuemlich to have been conscious variations on Southey's ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... are but two things set forth in this text, which is a great and wonderful antithesis between something which is in perpetual flux and passage and something which is permanent. If I might venture to cast the two thoughts into metaphorical form, I should say that here are a river and a rock. The one, the sad truth of sense, universally believed and as universally forgotten; the other, the glad truth of faith, so little regarded or operative ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... impossibility—but a horseman of the first order can at a critical moment so rouse a horse, and so accurately place his head and hind-legs in the right position, that he can make an extraordinary effort and achieve a miraculous leap. This in metaphorical language is called lifting a horse, because, to a bye-stander, it looks like it. But when a novice, or even an average horseman, attempts this sort of tour de force, he only worries his horse, and, ten to one, throws him into the fence. Those who are wise will content ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... a very elastic manner. The term of widest connotation is PARIN IGAT, which is equivalent to our cousin used in the wider or Scotch sense; it is applied to all blood relatives of the same generation, and is sometimes used in a metaphorical sense much as we use the term brother. There are no words corresponding to our words son and daughter, ANAK meaning merely child of either sex. There are no words corresponding to brother and sister; both are spoken of as PARIN, but this word is often used as a title of endearment in ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... brilliant success can give to a provincial physician. But in that very choice you interest me. My choice has been much thesame,—a small circle, but the first in it. Yet, had I been a man, or had my dear Colonel been a man whom it was in the power of a woman's art to raise one step higher in that metaphorical ladder which is not the ladder of the angels, why, then—what then? No matter! I am contented. I transfer my ambition to Jane. Do you not ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the name of the caste it is probable that the caste-name suggested the gotra-name and not the reverse. It is highly improbable that a large occupational caste should be named after an animal, and the metaphorical similitude can safely be rejected. The name seems therefore either to come from krishi, cultivation, or from ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... English form. At least three words in each long line were alliterative— two in the first half, and one in the second. Metaphorical phrases were common, such as war-adder for arrow, war-shirts for armour, whale's-path or swan-road for the sea, wave-horse for a ship, tree-wright for carpenter. Different statements of the same fact, different phrases for the ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... [Greek: paegaious krataeras]—I have ventured the above translation for this difficult combination from the meaning of the term [Greek: paegae], found elsewhere in the Oracles, in the metaphorical sense of "source" (compare also Plato, Phaed. 245 C., 856 D., [Greek: paegae kai archae chinaeseos]—"the source and beginning of motion"), and also from the meaning of [Greek: krataer] (crater), as "a ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead

... behaviour is the fact that the nerves and nerve cells of the vegetative apparatus, the nerves leading to the viscera and the endocrine glands, like the solar plexus, are affected by stimuli of lower value than those which arouse the brain cells. In the metaphorical language of the old psychology, the threshold value, that is the strength or loudness of stimulus sufficient to make itself felt or heard, is less for the vegetative apparatus than for the brain. So we begin to glimpse why an emotion seems to be experienced ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... The metaphorical use of the word is equally expressive of its literal meaning, for it is applied to the production of new dispositions of mind and soul utterly opposite to those previously existing. "Create in me a clean heart;" which God thus explains: "A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Taylor's poetry is written under the excitement of passion, and does not proceed from that laborious process of constructing effects, to which a large number of poets owe their success. The consequence is that his language is vividly metaphorical, only dealing in similes when in a comparative repose, and never going out of the way to hunt up one of those eternal likes, which have emasculated our poetic style, and are fast becoming a leading characteristic in American verse, to the utter destruction of every thing like ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... notwithstanding, left a considerable name. His diction was rich and copious; he explained every thing with grace and elegance; his periods flowed with a suavity that charmed his audience; his language, when metaphorical, was bold, yet accurate; and, if he hazarded an unusual phrase, he was justified by the energy with which his meaning was conveyed. Julio Secundo, si longior contigisset aetas, clarissimum profecto nomen oratoris apud posteros ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... Even Julius Broughton's audacity was not to be carried to the point of forcing himself and his friend, uninvited, upon a set of young people already carefully selected and for the time being rigidly separated from the rest of mankind by metaphorical white ribbons ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth's character of the happy warrior cannot be reached in the height of it but by a warrior; nay, so much is it beyond common strength that I had supposed the entire meaning of it to be metaphorical, until one of the best soldiers of England himself read me the poem,[142] and taught me, what I might have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was entirely literal. There is nothing of so high reach distinctly demonstrable in Friedrich: but I see more and more, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... irritation, and he felt only the mellow gloom of the evening and the sweet scents of the moor. In such weather he had a trick of walking with his head high and his nostrils wide, sniffing the air like the wild ass of the desert with which the metaphorical George had erstwhile compared him. That young man meanwhile was occupied with his own reflections. His good nature had been victimized, he had been made to fetch and carry continually, and the result was that he had scarcely ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... have been distorted by corruption, and these are the most difficult to trace: to which may be added, that the terms we now employ to express our feelings and passions, and all that depicts mind and its operations, are of a figurative or metaphorical origin. Instead of any word being insignificant, there is no one but may become the keystone in a sentence; and therefore a word blotted out in a perspicuous, that is, a properly constructed sentence, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam

... She would still give him his liberty, if she believed that he wished it; for then her pride would settle the question; but she must have more conclusive evidence on the point than the Reverend Doctor's metaphorical ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... is either current, or strange, or metaphorical, or ornamental, or newly-coined, or ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... somewhat similar kind) as striking a contrast with Troilus and Cressida, as Edward IV. does with Henry VI. His spectacles and pageants, chiefly in honour of London (London's Jus Honorarium, with other metaphorical Latin titles of the same description) are heavy, the weakness of his versification being especially felt in such pieces. His strength lies in the domestic and contemporary drama, where his pathos had free play, unrestrained ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... allow him the use of these words in a metaphorical and abusive meaning. But enough hath been spoken of ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... Allan. "The business is going with 'a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and a wind that follows free.' I'm not joking; I'm only metaphorical. A regular accountant has poked his nose into the books, and a steady-going lawyer's clerk attends at the office once a week. That doesn't look like neglect, does it? Leave the new steward alone for the present, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... forming, often become half-metaphors, as from a sort of instinct. Thus, instead of fully forming a simile, he merely suggests it; throwing in just enough of it to start the thoughts on that track, and then condensing the whole into a semi-metaphorical shape. Which seems to explain why it is that these suggestions of similes, notwithstanding the stereotyped censures of a too formal criticism, seldom trouble any reader who is so unsophisticated as to care little for the form, so he be sure of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... this is the inference to which our argument points. Further evidence to the same effect is supplied by Greek history. The early poems of the Greeks—which, be it remembered, were sacred legends embodied in that rhythmical, metaphorical language which strong feeling excites—were not recited, but chanted: the tones and the cadences were made musical by the same influences ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... expensive household. Moreover, he got rid of Mrs. Hazlitt on very easy terms. Still he must constantly have had on him the sensation that he lived by his work, and by that only. It seems to be (as far as one can make it out) this sensation which more than anything else jades and tires what some very metaphorical men of letters are pleased to call their Pegasus. But Hazlitt, though he served in the shafts, shows little trace of the harness. He has frequent small carelessnesses of style, but he would probably have ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... the present version differs from a merely literal translation are the following: (1)in a rather broad interpretation of pregnant words and phrases; (2)in a conception of some of the Old English compounds as conventional phrases in which the original metaphorical sense is dead; (3)in a free treatment of connecting words; (4)in frequent substitution of a proper ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker

... this wonderful Person, it is Perplexity to know where to begin his Encomium. Others may in a Metaphorical or Philosophick Sense be said to command themselves, but this Emperor is also literally under his own Command. How generous and how good was his entring his own Name as a private Man in the Army he raised, that none in it might expect to out-run the Steps with which he himself advanced! ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of Claudius women and boys were searched to ascertain whether there were any styluses in their pen cases. Stabbing with the pen, therefore, is not merely a metaphorical expression. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... use this term in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals, in a time of dearth, may be truly said to struggle with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... majesty seems also to have considerably improved in his taste; owing, no doubt, to the present improving state of society, and the universal diffusion of useful knowledge. Indeed, we no longer hear of cloven-footed devils, only in a metaphorical sense—fire and brimstone are extinct or nearly so; the embers of hell and eternal damnation are chiefly kept alive and blown up by ultras among the sectaries who are invariably the promoters of religious fanaticism. Beauty, wit, address, with the less shackled ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... a long line overflows the buffer and trashes data beyond it. Good defensive programming would check for overflow on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is full up. The term is used of and by humans in a metaphorical sense. "What time did I agree to meet you? My buffer must have overflowed." Or "If I answer that phone my buffer is going to overflow." ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... is to invest capital in the manufacture. This implies that industry can not be employed to any greater extent than there is capital to invest. The proposition, indeed, must be assented to as soon as it is distinctly apprehended. The expression "applying capital" is of course metaphorical: what is really applied is labor; capital being an indispensable condition. The food of laborers and the materials of production have no productive power; but labor can not exert its productive power unless ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... addition, he performed his brave acts in a quiet, unassuming way, so that often enough they passed unnoticed; and when he had finished, he sank back into his perfectly simple life, and never marched about in metaphorical uniform with a drawn sword, and men before him beating drums, and banging cymbals, and blowing trumpets for the people to see, and hear, and say, "Oh, what ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... it he must needs marry—but he must wait for the hundredth woman. This, of course, he will not do. If he can find a Flossy, he will go down on his knees to her, when she ought to be on hers to him; metaphorical knees, in this case. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... the tired magazine reader resting for a critical second on the above title will judge it to be merely metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything to do with cups and lips and pennies and brooms. This story is the great exception. It has to do with an actual, material, visible and ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... rained, some pages drove in twenty cows and ten goats, with a polite metaphorical message from their king, to the effect that I had pleased him much, and he hoped I would accept these few "chickens" until he could send more,—when both Maula and N'yamgundu, charmed with their success in having brought a welcome ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... had had so many chances, and had become so very hot, that not to have answered at length would have bordered on the miraculous. The persevering governess was not displeased at this, for she would not have lost the opportunity of displaying her own skill in metaphorical illustration, for a great deal, I am very sure. The clock struck eight; there was a general movement. The three sisters folded their work, and lodged it carefully in separate drawers. The eldest then produced the table-cloth, knives, forks, and spoons. The second exhibited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... Lunch, too, was all that could be desired. Mrs. Polkington's manners were always gracious, and to-day she had a charming air of taking Richard into the family—after having shut all the doors, actual and metaphorical, which led to anything real and personal. The Captain was rather twittery at lunch, at times inclined to talk too much, at times heavily silent and always obviously submissive to his wife. Yesterday's excitement was not enough to account for this in Julia's opinion. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... us go further still, and suppose that our attention is attracted to the material side of the metaphor by the choice of a relationship which is incompatible with the gender of the two words composing the metaphorical expression: we get a laughable result. Such is the well-known saying, also attributed to M. Prudhomme, "Tous les arts (masculine) sont soeurs (feminine)." "He is always running after a joke," was said in Boufflers' presence regarding a very conceited fellow. Had Boufflers replied, "He won't ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... festivity of last night, some of our friends, if not perchance altogether ebrii, or drunken, were, to say the least, ebrioli, by which the ancients designed those who were fuddled, or, as your English vernacular and metaphorical phrase goes, half-seas-over. Not that I would so insinuate respecting you, Captain Waverley, who, like a prudent youth, did rather abstain from potation; nor can it be truly said of myself, who, having assisted at the tables of many great generals and marechals at their ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only—that of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... am here quoting from the Quest article) remarks, "As the last line of our quotation gives us quite plainly to understand, a number of words which we have italicized are obviously used in an unusual, metaphorical, sense, that is to say as terms of the Christian Mystery language." While Harnack, admitting that the Christian character of the text is indisputable, adds significantly: "aber das Christentum ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... situation, prettily worked out. And there is something piquant in the combination of the old Hindu metaphorical style, half mystical in allusion, with what is really a plea for the emancipation ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... when the sense factors are the instruments of its production and the knowledge produced is of the objects with which the senses are in contact. The contact of the senses with the objects is not in any sense metaphorical but actual. Not only in the case of touch and taste are the senses in contact with the objects, but in the cases of sight, hearing and smell as well. The senses according to Nyaya-Vais'e@sika are material and we have seen that the system does not admit of any other kind of transcendental ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... aim; normal development cannot be had without regard to the vigor of the body—an obvious enough fact and yet one whose due recognition in practice would almost automatically revolutionize many of our educational practices. "Nature" is indeed a vague and metaphorical term, but one thing that "Nature" may be said to utter is that there are conditions of educational efficiency, and that till we have learned what these conditions are and have learned to make our practices accord ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... that we are companions in misery, don't you?" he said. "They have taken my calf from me too—though my calf, indeed, was only a calf in an extremely metaphorical sense—and it never was exactly mine, anyhow—I daresay it's belonged from the beginning to another man. You, at least, have n't that gall and wormwood added to your cup. And now you must really try to pull yourself together. It's no good crying. And besides, there ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... jog-trot? They sounded right enough, if you stood for that kind of thing, but they betrayed him, his defective imagination, his straining mind. He didn't see the earth as it was. He was so enamored of metaphorical indirection that he tried to see everything in the terms of something else. But to-day she had her own thoughts. She sat staring into the fire, her cheeks burned by the leaping heat, and Dick, looking up at her, stopped ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... and the Church speak literally, without the use of metaphors, they invariably apply the term "grace" to these vital acts themselves and ascribe their supernatural character to an immediate act of God.(74) In perfect conformity with this teaching St. Augustine explains such metaphorical terms as vocare and tangere in the sense of credere and fides.(75) God employs no "fluent qualities" or "non-vital entities" in the dispensation of His grace, but effects the supernatural elevation of the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... is the lowest hoop upon a leglin, or milk- pail. Allan Ramsay applies the phrase in the same metaphorical sense. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... partly literal, since the widow's weed is close-wrapping and voluminous—partly metaphorical, since the acceptance of ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... eternal series of metamorphoses of which our present universe is only the last stage, are alternatives, neither of which is scientifically untenable, and neither scientifically demonstrable. But science knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless or empty; or in any respect less the seat of law and order than it is now. One might as well talk of a fresh-laid hen's egg being "without form and void," because the chick therein is potential and not actual, as apply such terms to ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... many writers, otherwise of high authority, seem to have taken the same view; while others who could have had no such notion, having used the words Beauty and the Beautiful in an allegorical or metaphorical sense, have sometimes been misinterpreted literally. Hence Winckelmann reproaches Michael Angelo for his continual talk about Beauty, when he showed nothing of it in his works. But it is very evident that the Bella and Bellezza of Michael Angelo were never used by him in ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... instruction to you in that single sentence in which he says, 'Mr. God's-peace was not a native of the town.' John Bunyan has gathered up many gospel Scriptures into that single allegorical sentence. He has made many old and familiar passages fresh and full of life again in that one metaphorical sentence. It is the work of genius to set forth the wont and the well known in a clear, simple, and at the same time surprising, light like that. There is a peace that is native and natural to the town of Mansoul, and to understand that peace, its nature, its grounds, its extent, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... same thing, and more fully shown wherein the difference consists of symbolic and metaphorical, in my first Lay Sermon; and the substantial correspondence of the genuine Platonic doctrine and logic with those of Lord Bacon, in my Essays on Method, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... two kinds, those of manner, of course, and those which by a metaphorical use of the term may ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis

... it. I had been in New York, and knew the length of Broadway; and at the recollection, felt flattered by the thought of being conveyed in an open chariot drawn by four or even eight horses, with nodding plumes, (literal ones for the horses,—only metaphorical ones for me,) past those stately buildings fluttering with handkerchiefs, and through streets black with people thronging to see the man who had solved the riddle of Africa. And then it would be pleasant, too, to make a neat little speech ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... been suspected to appear. One of the biographers of Sir HANS SLOANE expresses himself in this manner:—"Our author's thirst for knowledge seems to have been born with him, so that his Cabinet of Rarities may be said to have commenced with his being." This strange metaphorical style has only confused an obscure truth. SLOANE, early in life, felt an irresistible impulse which inspired him with the most enlarged views of the productions of nature, and he exulted in their accomplishment; for in his will he has solemnly recorded, that his collections were the fruits of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... way onward, and he will find, in many a shelter'd recess, "flowers of all hue," and herbs of all qualities: so that fragrance and salubrity are not wanting in this said plain, which has been thus depicted in a style so marvellously metaphorical! ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... after his supposed death to some place known only to his disciples. According to Henke, Christ was a remarkable teacher, distinguished and instructed by God. Inspiration was what Cicero ascribes to the poets; the doctrine of the Trinity came from Platonism; the name "Son of God" is metaphorical, and describes not the nature but the qualities of Christ; and personality is ascribed to the Holy Ghost through a prosopopoeia not uncommon in the New Testament. The chief service of Christ was his doctrine. As a Divine Messenger it was his business to bring forward ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... silenced after three performances;" it being objected that the plan and sentiments of it had too boldly vindicated, and might inflame, Republican principles. A prologue, by Dryden, to "The Prophetess," was prohibited, on account of certain "familiar metaphorical sneers at the Revolution" it was supposed to contain, at a time when King William was prosecuting the war in Ireland. Bank's tragedy of "Mary, Queen of Scotland," was withheld from the stage for twenty years, owing to "the profound penetration of the Master ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... other hand, the discovery of abstractions was the great source of all mental improvement in after ages. It was the pushing aside of the old, the revelation of the new. But each one of the company of abstractions, if we may speak in the metaphorical language of Plato, became in turn the tyrant of the mind, the dominant idea, which would allow no other to have a share in the throne. This is especially true of the Eleatic philosophy: while the absoluteness of Being was asserted in every form of language, the sensible ...
— Sophist • Plato

... a sort of setting of the pace, or a metaphorical shaking of a bony fist in the face of the day, as much as to say, 'If I admit you here you'll have to ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... not satisfied until they have forced open all the secret drawers of the mind and stuck the contents on a bill file,—one of those hard-bosomed women who stump into church as they stump into a department store with an air of "Now then, what can you show me that's new," who go about with a metaphorical set of burglar's tools in a large bag with which to break open confidences and who have no faith in ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... God sweep your road!), All Akbar had exclaimed as I mounted at the door, and as we pass through the city gate the old sentinel, when told that I am at last starting on the promised journey to Meshed on the asp-i-awhan, supplements this with "Padaram daromad!" (My father has come out!), a Persian metaphorical exclamation, signifying that such wonderful news has had the effect of calling his father ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... two more. In the twenty-first stanza, I prefer {p.236} Buerger's trampling the corn into chaff and dust, to your more metaphorical, and therefore less picturesque, "destructive sweep the field along." In the thirtieth, "On whirlwind's pinions swiftly borne," to me seems less striking than the still disapparition of the tumult and bustle—the earth has opened, and he is sinking with his evil genius to the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... immediately as it escapes the preacher. After a very long, and a very tediously sung psalm, M. Rollin commenced his discourse. He is an extemporaneous preacher. His voice is sweet and clear, rather than sonorous and impressive; and he is perhaps, occasionally, too metaphorical in his composition. For the first time I heard the words "Oh Dieu!" pronounced with great effect: but the sermon was made up of better things than mere exclamations. M. Rollin was frequently ingenious; logical, and convincing; and his address to the young ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... important to a pastoral race are well nigh innumerable. Poetry has seized upon the material terms and has converted them into a host of metaphors; for "the genius of the Arabic language, like that of the Hebrew, is to form new ideas by giving a metaphorical signification to material objects (e.g. 'Azud, lit. the upper arm; met. a helper)." Chenery, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... something to show the evil of disobedience before he can pardon. Christ is willing to die in order to make this impression on the minds of men. And this he accordingly does. But unfortunately, as we said, there is nothing in the Scripture, not even a metaphorical expression, to support this theory. The apostles did not have recourse for their figures and images to such usage of government, and that for the simple reason that no such usage or necessity then existed. The ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... is metaphorical if we choose to be captious. Scratch the simplest expressions, and you will find the metaphor. Written words are handage, inkage and paperage; it is only by metaphor, or substitution and transposition of ideas, that we can call them language. They are indeed potential language, and ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... According to the allegorical sense the "angels of peace" are the apostles and preachers who weep for men's sins. If according to the anagogical sense this passage be expounded of the blessed angels, then the expression is metaphorical, and signifies that universally speaking the angels will the salvation of mankind: for in this sense we attribute passions to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... "guv'nor," a contraction of "governor," a father. It will, no doubt, soon supersede sire, which is at present the poetical equivalent for the name of the author of one's existence. See all the poets, passim. 9. "Said as how he'd never fight," the thing was out of the question; a metaphorical phrase, though certainly, at present, a vulgar one. 10. "Snooze," slumber personified, like "Morpheus," or "Somnus." 11. "Daddle."—Q. from daktulos, a finger—pars pro toto!—Hand, the only synonym for it ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton



Words linked to "Metaphorical" :   metaphor, nonliteral, figurative, metaphoric



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