Metaphor Definition

From StopUsingMetaphors it has been noticed that not all people have a precise idea what metaphor is. The discussion was moved here.

Please stop using metaphors. When you find them nice [how could a metaphor be nice?] and you can't help but use them, please further elaborate the 'metaphorical' concepts in terms of concrete description, definitions, mathematic-like reasoning. Very often metaphors are a sign [visual metaphor] that you don't have a clear [visual metaphor] concept, therefore they shouldn't ever be used in patterns [spatial metaphor], because patterns are supposed to communicate an objectively good solutions to a specific class of concrete problems. ["patterns communicating solutions to problems"? Since when did patterns grow mouths and problems, ears?]

I think it can never be said enough. Please stop using metaphors in order to define concepts or to do reasoning about software development.

Stop using any literary trick in defining concepts (personification, parables, epithets and please add to the list).

[You first.] Your obnoxious intrusions in my text are as impolite as they are factually false. Please remove them and educate yourself better before rushing into debates. There's no figurative speech in "finding metaphors nice", "sign" as used above is not a metaphor, "clear" is not a metaphor, at best it can be an epithet but it isn't in this case; "patterns" is not metaphor, and in software engineering jargon it is as common a noun as you can get. And since "communicates" literally means to convey information, it should be "crystal clear" to you (see, that's an epithet) that it the concept of communicating does not apply to humans only. When I say a poem communicates an idea it is not a personification.

There's no figurative speech in "finding metaphors nice", "sign" as used above is not a metaphor, "clear" is not a metaphor, at best it can be an epithet but it isn't in this case; "patterns" is not metaphor, and in software engineering jargon it is as common a noun as you can get. And since "communicates" literally means to convey information, it should be "crystal clear" to you (see, that's an epithet) that it the concept of communicating does not apply to humans only. When I say a poem communicates an idea it is not a personification.

Brief list of figures of speech examples:

If you have any other doubt, please consult http://www.dictionary.com, where for metaphor you can see the very accurate definition: "A figure of speech in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two."

If your examples of epithet and personification are meant to be non-metaphorical, then they fail. A "crystalline" voice is what, then, if that isn't metaphorical? Possessing cleavage planes? Having a motif repeated over a point lattice? A display of mastery, in general, is in no way literally splendid - unless it's a display of mastery in being bright and vary-coloured.These personifications are strongly metaphorical, too. The death may have taken on the person of the sower, but the confusion and fear are metaphorically seeds (that being what is sown). Most developers "listen to what the code tells them" by reading program texts - listening with the eyes? Couldn't be more metaphorical.

No, all the above have nothing to do with metaphors. Read again the definition of metaphor and compare the examples. Plus the rule of thumb is that metaphors are generally expressed by nouns, not adjectives or verbs. A metaphor is a denotation of a thing/concept by a word that denotes something else, with the intent to draw some qualities from the nominal sense of the word. When Shakespeare says the world is a stage, the stage is used to draw the theater qualities into characterizing the whole world. When you say "Death sowed fear" you don't substitute fear with seeds, a metaphors would have been "The death have sowed the seeds [of fear]", where you want to denote the beginning of fear with the word used for seeds in order to suggest the incipient nature of the fear, the germination , the long running nature of the process by which the fear grows etc, etc. I guess you make a confusion between metaphorical and figurative. A metaphorical speech is a figurative speech but not all figurative speech can be said to be metaphorical. An alegorical discourse is figurative because figurative is the general category but is not necessary metaphorical.

And another thing, when you make use of dictionary.com (like you did for splendid), please read past the first sentence marked by 1. The same word can have several slightly divergent or even totally unrelated meanings. From http://www.dictionary.com "splendid" doesn't mean only "(1) brilliant with light or colors" but also "(5) Very good or satisfying; praiseworthy". Got it now?

concrete problems: problems consisting of a hard strong building material made by mixing a cementing material (as portland cement) and a mineral aggregate (as sand and gravel) with sufficient water to cause the cement to set and bind the entire mass?

No, all the above have nothing to do with metaphors. Read again the definition of metaphor and compare the examples.

Well, see, the whole phrase can be not a metaphor and the words within it still be metaphorical. As well as reading Lakoff and Johnson's MetaphorsWeLiveBy (to learn how pervasive and inescapable metaphorical word-use is), you might also like to read Lakoff's WomenFireAndDangerousThings to learn how limiting (and limited) a concept "definition" is. As an illustration of the first point...

When you say "Death sowed fear" you don't substitute fear with seeds. Maybe you don't, but the listener pretty much has to, or else they can't make sense of the phrase. You might want to check out UnderstandingComputersAndCognition to learn how language does not work by you making an image in your head then causing the same image to appear in your listeners' heads.

Wasn't it "The death"? Ok, so if you'd said "The death caused fear", or "The death distributed fear", or "The death spread fear", then you might have a point. But that's not what you said. You said "The death sowed fear".

But "sowed" is part of "to sow", and all its meanings that aren't actually to do with seeds are to do with other things being treated like seeds, or imagined to have seed-like properties.

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