how to classify?

[Rick Barr]

Curiously, I found three literalized metaphors, much like the second example
you quoted, in a recent story by Cheston Knapp, managing editor of *Tin
House* magazine. The story is called "A Minor Momentousness in the History
of Love" (*One Story*, March 30, 2010). Here are the quotes, the first of
which is the clearest example of this device:

"And then reason flew out the window, the same window I shattered with my
fist, her car's rear driver's side window" (7).
"The counselors say when you hit a wall, don't let your rage dictate that
you punch or head-butt your way *through* the wall, but be calm and calmly
ask yourself is it possible there's a way *around* this wall" (9).
"The clouds have gathered like a pyramid-scheme into a solitary steel-wool
mass above us" (9).

That doesn't answer your question, though. I have been calling these devices
literalized metaphors, but I am unaware if a more technical, rhetorical name
exists, along the lines of aposiopesis or paralipsis. It would be great if
someone could come up with it.

-- Rick


On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 8:15 AM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> <
JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:

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> Poster:       "James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>"
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> Subject:      how to classify?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Heard in the lab:
>
> "I don't want to beat it with a dead horse"
>
> How do we classify this?
>
> I don't think it's an eggcorn, since it is not a plausible substitution of
> one word/phrase for another.
>
> Is it a malaprop?  "the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one
> intended but ludicrously wrong in the context" (MWCD10)  It doesn't seem to
> fit that definition.
>
>
>
> From the same speaker: "he hit the learning curve and bounced back".  This
> one is simply a piling of one metaphor onto another to create noovel
> imagery, like "piling Pelion on Odessa".
>
>     - Jim Landau
>
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