Focus on Words

Since ancient times writers, poets, orators have created a great amount of
metaphors, some of which have become well-known while others remained on the
pages of books. Those metaphors or tropes, that after a definite period of time become
well-recognizable and fixed in the dictionaries are called language metaphors, e.g.
She is the apple of the eye.
There are also speech metaphors which are fresh, establish striking associations
between two phenomena. They are always quite individual.
In the following lines the poets and writers create images based on similarities:
Morning is
a new sheet of paper
for you to write on.
(Eve Merriam)
There is a kind of metaphor called personification in which human characteristics
are given to a non-human force of object. It is widely used in poetry and prose, e.g.
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting fl owers,
From the seas and the streams.
(P. B. Shelley)
Very often in order to characterize somebody or something the speaker uses such
say ings as
Free as a bird
Dead as a doornail
They are language similes.
Simile, like metaphor helps readers visualize ideas on the principle of similarity
but it includes the words “like” or “as”.
Similes are common in everyday speech and some are used so often that they
become lifeless:
George shook like a leaf in a storm.
Simile differs from mere comparison as e.g. “He is clever as his father”, because
in the comparison two concepts/things compared belong to the same class.
The difference between simile and metaphor leads some scholars to the belief that
metaphor is more emotional and more expressive.
Do you know what is the difference between “greenyears” and “green trees”?
The first is a poetic epithet and the second is a simple attribute. The former creates
an image while the latter indicates one of the properties of the thing spoken about.
Epithet expresses a characteristic of an object, both existing and imaginary,
e.g. The glow of an angry sunset.
Its basic feature is its emotiveness and subjectivity as its unusual characteristic of
the object.
In the majority of examples epithet is expressed by adjectives or qualitative
adverbs (e.g. sleepless bay, triumphant look), modifying nouns or verbs.
inverted epithet - devil of a woman (a devilish woman), giant of a man (a gigan tic
man). Epithets can also be metaphorical, as “the iron hate”, “a tobacco-stained
smile”.” Oh!He is my dear enemy”
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