{"id":69,"date":"2006-05-25T18:43:18","date_gmt":"2006-05-25T17:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/25\/all-the-worlds-a-stage\/"},"modified":"2006-05-25T18:43:18","modified_gmt":"2006-05-25T17:43:18","slug":"all-the-worlds-a-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"All the world\u2019s a stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of today’s post is an example of a metaphor from Shakespeare’s As You Like It<\/em>. The full version is:<\/p>\n

All the world’s a stage,
\nAnd all the men and women merely players
\nThey have their exits and their entrances;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Wikipedia<\/a>, a metaphor, from the Greek: \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03c6\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03bd (metapherin)<\/em> – “to carry something across” or “transfer”, is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects. A trope is a figure of speech consisting of a play on words.<\/p>\n

There are a number of different types of metaphors:<\/p>\n

Extended metaphors<\/strong>, which set up a principal subject with several subsidiary subjects or comparisons. The above quote from Shakespeare is a good example of this.<\/p>\n

Epic or Homeric similes<\/strong> are extended metaphors containing details about the vehicle that are not, in fact, necessary for the metaphoric purpose. An example of this from Black Adder<\/em> is: “This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, it’s a twelve-story crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying ‘This Is a Large Crisis’.”<\/p>\n

Mixed metaphors<\/strong> combine parts of two or more unrelated metaphors together creating a nonsensical but often amusing image. For example, “look before you bark up the wrong end of the stick”, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it spoil the broth” and “They\u2019re biting the hand of the goose that laid the golden egg”, from Samuel Goldwyn.<\/p>\n

Dead metaphors<\/strong> started life as metaphors but over time have lost their metaphoric nature and become ordinary expressions. Examples include “to grasp a idea”, “arm of a chair” and “leg of a table”.<\/p>\n

Have you mixed an metaphors or heard any metaphoric mixing being committed recently?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of today’s post is an example of a metaphor from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The full version is: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players They have their exits and their entrances; According to Wikipedia, a metaphor, from the Greek: \u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03c6\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03bd (metapherin) – “to carry something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}