The power of the metaphor

Of all the tools in the rhetorical toolbox, there is one we reach for more than any other, usually without even noticing. It is the metaphor. For thousands of years it has lived in our books, our scriptures and our speeches, and today you will find it staring back at you from advertisements and news headlines almost every single day. "Market crash." "The dot-com bubble." "Culture shock." Every one of them is a metaphor doing quiet, powerful work.

But what actually is a metaphor?

You could write an entire library on the subject. There are countless interpretations, definitions and categories, but in the end the only thing that matters is what is useful to you, standing in front of a room. So let us keep it simple and practical.

Where the word comes from

The whole idea becomes wonderfully easy to grasp the moment you learn where the word comes from. "Metaphor" comes from the Greek metaphorá, which means "to carry across". Aristotle put it like this: a metaphor gives a thing a name that really belongs to something else. For me, a metaphor is simply this. You carry the thing you actually want to say across to another word, one that is more vivid, clearer, and often completely impossible if you took it literally.

How a metaphor is built

A spoken metaphor usually has two parts: the thing you are describing, and the image you describe it with. Imagine your IT department is always up to something, forever reorganising, occasionally driving everyone a little mad. You might say, "The IT department is a circus." "The IT department" is the real subject, concrete and grounded. "A circus" is the image, abstract and colourful. That contrast is exactly where the power lives.

A few more:

• You are a star.
• My father is a rock.
• I am dead on my feet.
• Blood is thicker than water.

Sometimes we drop the first half altogether and speak in images alone. In finance we talk about a "bubble". In computing we talk about a "virus". A single borrowed word that paints the whole situation, and everyone understands the meaning without it ever being spelled out.

And sometimes a metaphor is simply an example lifted from somewhere completely different. As Abraham Lincoln is said to have put it, "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I would spend six of them sharpening my axe." Not one word about the value of preparation, and yet the message could not be clearer.

Metaphor or simile? Don't lose sleep over it

People often ask me about the difference between a metaphor and a simile. A metaphor tends to be bolder and more poetic. A simile is more direct, and usually gives itself away with the words "as" or "like". "White as snow." "Fast as the wind." "You are like a rose" is a simile. "You are a rose" is a metaphor, and a lovely impossibility, because of course you are not literally a rose.

I will happily admit that the line between the two can get blurry, and in a deep rhetorical analysis it quickly turns into splitting hairs. But stop for a second. When you are standing at the front of the room, about to deliver your presentation, does the label really matter? Not in the slightest.

So here is my advice. Instead of agonising over which is which, put your energy somewhere far more useful: reach for metaphors and similes to make your message clearer, sharper, and impossible to forget.