by James Geary
267. “If thought corrupts language . . .” Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language.” In: Why I Write. London: Penguin, 1984, p. 116.
268. Political language is “designed to make lies sound truthful . . .” Ibid., p. 120.
269. “A newly invented metaphor assists thought . . .” Ibid., p. 105–106.
270. “When pagan peoples had just embraced civilization . . .” Vico, Giambattista. New Science. London: Penguin Classics, 2001, p. 22.
271. “In all languages expressions for inanimate objects . . .” Ibid., pp. 159–160.
272. The “universal principle of etymology . . .” Ibid., p. 97.
273. “Coleridge expanded himself . . .” Cited in: Fisch, M. H. “The Coleridges, Dr. Prati, and Vico.” Modern Philology 41, 2, 1943, p. 121.
274. “I am more and more delighted with G. B. Vico.” Ibid., p. 112.
275. The orator “makes beauty . . .” Cited in: Schaeffer, John D. Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1990, p. 66.
276. “Co-operative act of comprehension.” Cohen, Ted. “Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy.” In: On Metaphor. Sacks, Sheldon, ed. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1979, p. 7.
277. “Experience is a comb . . .” Cited in: Sommer, Elyse, with Dorrie Weiss. Metaphors Dictionary. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2001.
278. “Like two skeletons copulating . . .” Cited in: Grothe, Mardy. I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like. New York: Collins, 2008, p. 83.
279. “She had nostrils like badger-holes.” Lee, Laurie. Cider with Rosie. London: Vintage Books, 2002, p. 80.
280. Humor and cognitive dissonance. Strick, Madelijn, et al. “Finding Comfort in a Joke: Consolatory Effects of Humor through Cognitive Distraction.” Emotion 9, 4, 2009, pp. 574–578.
281. Brain scans of people laughing. Mobbs, D., Greicius, M., Abdel-Azim, E., Menon, V., and Reiss, A. “Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Reward Centers.” Neuron 40, 5, pp. 1041–1048.
282. Von Economo cells. Watson, Karli K., Matthews, Benjamin J., and Allman, John M. “Brain Activation during Sight Gags and Language-Dependent Humor.” Cerebral Cortex 17, 2, 2007, pp. 314–324.
283. The ACC and ambiguity and error detection. Hirsh, Jacob B., and Inzlicht, Michael. “Error-related Negativity Predicts Academic Performance.” Psychophysiology 46, 2009, pp. 1–5.
284. “Above all things, care is to be taken . . .” Quintilian. Institutes, Book 8, Chapter 6, section 50. Available at http://www2.iastate.edu/~honeyl/quintilian/8/chapter6.html#4.
285. The New Yorker and “Block That Metaphor.” My thanks to Jon Michaud, The New Yorker’s head of library, for information on the history of Block That Metaphor. For more information, go to http://emdashes.com/2007/05/ask-the-librarians-v.php.
286. Step Up to the Plate and Fish or Cut Bait. Reprinted in the New Yorker, January 10, 2000.
287. “The moment that you walk into the bowels of the armpit of the cesspool of crime, you immediately cringe.” Reprinted in the New Yorker, March 27, 2000.
288. Karyn Hollis’s own Block that Metaphor archive. For more howlers, go to http://www19.homepage.villanova.edu/karyn.hollis/prof_academic/Courses/common_files/best_ever_metaphors_and_analogie.htm.
289. Kafka and cognitive dissonance. Proulx, Travis, and Heine, Steven J. “Connections from Kafka: Exposure to Meaning Threats Improves Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar.” Psychological Science 20, 9, 2009, pp. 1125–1131. The stories are available online at http://www.psych.ubc.ca/heine/ImplicitLearningStories.doc.
290. “Devotee of metaphor.” Wilson-Quayle, J. “Max Black.” American National Biography 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 862–864.
291. “What is needed . . .” Black, Max. Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962, p. 40.
292. “Suppose I look at the night sky . . .” Ibid., p. 41.
293. Donald Leavis as “the George Wallace of Northern Ireland.” Tourangeau, Roger. “Metaphor and Cognitive Structure.” In: Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives. Miall, David S., ed. Brighton, UK: Harvester Press, 1982, pp. 28–29.
294. “Metaphorical terms give people much more pleasure . . .” Cicero. De Oratore. Volume 2, pp. 125–127.
295. “Metaphorical force . . .” Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976, pp. 79–80.
296. “Beautiful like the accidental meeting . . .” Cited in: Arnheim, Rudolf. Visual Thinking. London: Faber and Faber, 1970, p. 210.
297. “In using metaphors to give names to nameless things . . .” Aristotle. The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle, p. 170
298. “I constructed it myself . . .” Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1934, p. 82.
299. “I feel too intensely . . .” Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Volume 2. Coburn, Kathleen, ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 2372.
300. “A few grams of dantine . . . have an affair with a goat . . .” Lem, Stanislaw. The Futurological Congress. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 1974, pp. 80–81.
301. “Icicle of blood” and other kennings. Sturluson, Snorri. The Prose Edda. Translated with an introduction and notes by Jesse L. Byock. London: Penguin, 2005, p. 124.
302. Kennings for earth. Ibid., p. 112.
303. Kennings for fire. Ibid., p. 113.
304. Bonobos and metaphor. Kenneally, Christine. The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language. New York: Viking Penguin, 2007, pp. 42–43.
305. A flashlight battery and a hairbrush. Gardner, Howard, and Winner, Ellen. “The Development of Metaphoric Competence: Implications for Humanistic Disciplines.” In: On Metaphor. Sacks, Sheldon, ed. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1979, p. 132.
306. A comb becomes a centipede . . . Winner, Ellen. The Point of Words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988, p. 90–91.
307. Provide an appropriate simile to end the story. Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 404–405.
308. The upside-down mop was called “a flower.” Winner, Ellen. The Point of Words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony, p. 73.
309. “Sally was a bird flying to her nest.” Gentner, D., and Wolff, P. “Metaphor and Knowledge Change.” In: Cognitive Dynamics: Conceptual Change in Humans and Machines. Districh, E., and Marbnau, A., eds. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2000, pp. 314–315.
310. “The prison guard had become a hard rock . . .” Gardner, Howard, and Winner, Ellen. “The Development of Metaphoric Competence: Implications for Humanistic Disciplines,” p. 128.
311. The Asch and Nerlove experiments. Asch, S. E., and Nerlove, Harriet. “The Development of Double Function Terms in Children: An Exploratory Investigation.” In: Perspectives in Psychological Theory: Essays in Honor of Heinz Werner. Kaplan, Bernard, and Wapner, Seymour, eds. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1960, pp. 47–60. See also: Winner, Ellen. The Point of Words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony, pp. 38–39 and Gentner, D. “Metaphor as Structure Mapping: The Relational Shift.” Child Development 59, 1, 1988, pp. 47–59.
312. Piaget and proverbs. Piaget, Jean. The Language and Thought of the Child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960, pp. 128–135.
313. They did even better, a later study found . . . Honeck, Richard P., Sowry, Brenda M., and Voegtle, Katherine. “Proverbial Understanding in a Pictorial Context.” Child Development 49, 2, 1978, pp. 327–331.
314. “Nettles.” Vernon Scannell’s poem is available at http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Vernon_Scannell/4868.
315. The time line of metaphorical development in young people. Gentner, Dedre. “Metaphor as Structure Mapping: The Relational Shift,” pp. 47–59.
317. “Ymir’s skull.” Sturluson, Snorri. The Prose Edda, p. 112.
318. Tamarian kennings from the “Darmok” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. See: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Darmok_%28episode%29.
319. Austria, Sweden, Poland, and Hungary. Tversky, Amos. “Features of Similarity.” In: Tversky, Amos. Preference, Belief, and Similarity: Selected Writings. Shafir, Eldar, ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, p. 31.
320. “A good metaphor is like a good detective story.” Ibid., p. 41.
321. Paintings, billboards, pimples, and warts. Glucksberg, Sam, and Keysar, B. “Understanding Metaphorical Comparisons: Beyond Similarity.” Psychological Review 97, 1, 1990, pp. 9–10.
322. “The same pair of objects . . .” Tversky, Amos. “Features of Similarity.” In: Tversky, Amos. Preference, Belief, and Similarity: Selected Writings, p. 41.
323. “No man is an island.” Donne, John. Selected Prose. London: Penguin, 1987, p. 126.
324. “Like a bear to its floe, I clambered to bed.” Cited in: Tourangeau, Roger, and Rips, Lance. “Interpreting and Evaluating Metaphors.” Journal of Memory and Language 30, 4, 1991, p. 464. For the full poem, see: Jarrell, Randall. The Complete Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1981, pp. 113–114.
325. “The eagle is a lion among birds.” Tourangeau, Roger, and Rips, Lance. “Interpreting and Evaluating Metaphors,” p. 457.
326. “It would be more illuminating . . . to say . . .” Black, Max. Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962, p. 37.
327. “As these Flatlanders are to you . . .” Lewis, C. S. “Bluspels and Flalansferes.” In: Rehabilitations and Other Essays. London: Oxford University Press, 1939, p. 139.
328. Flalansfere “had an air of mystery from the first . . .” Ibid., p. 146.
329. “An hourglass with legs on each side.” Glucksberg, Sam. “Metaphors in Conversation: How Are They Understood? Why Are They Used?” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 4, 3, 1989, pp. 125–143.
330. “When we pass beyond pointing to individual sensible objects . . .” Lewis, C. S. “Bluspels and Flalansferes.” In: Rehabilitations and Other Essays, p. 154.
331. Robert Hooke’s “cells.” Brown, Theodore L. Making Truth: Metaphor in Science. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 146.
332. Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier and the “greenhouse effect.” Ibid., p. 168.
333. Max Planck, quantum theory, and vibrating strings. Root-Bernstein, Robert and Michele. Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999, p. 137.
334. “The words or the language . . .” Cited in: Hadamard, Jacques. The Mathematician’s Mind: The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 142.
335. “Language, in its literal capacity . . .” Langer, Suzanne K. Philosophy in a New Key. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 201.
336. Hui Tzu’s paradoxes. Cited in: Chuang Tzu. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968, pp. 375–377.
337. Hui Tzu “responded without hesitation . . .” Graham, Angus C. Disputers of the Tao. Chicago: Open Court Press, 1989, p. 77.
338. Hui Tzu and the King of Liang. Cited in: Mencius. Translated by D. C. Lau. New York, Penguin, 1970, pp. 262–263. The story is also recounted in: Holyoak, Keith J., and Thagard, Paul. Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, p. 183.
339. “Master’s metaphor.” Lewis, C. S. “Bluspels and Flalansferes.” In: Rehabilitations and Other Essays, p. 140.
340. “Our thought is independent of the metaphors we employ . . .” Ibid., p. 145.
341. The genie and the jewels. Holyoak, Keith J., and Thagard, Paul. Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought, pp. 75–80.
342. “A kind of teeming . . .” Feynman, Richard. Six Easy Pieces: The Fundamentals of Physics Explained. London: Penguin Books, 1995, p. 4.
343. Feynman’s explanation of electromagnetic fields. Ibid., p. 31.
344. “When you have satisfied yourself that the theorem is true . . .” Pólya, George. Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning. Vol. 1: Induction and Analogy in Mathematics. Vol. 2: Patterns of Plausible Inference. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954, p. 76.
345. Things “do not behave like waves . . .” Feynman, Richard. Six Easy Pieces: The Fundamentals of Physics Explained, p. 116–117
346. “There is something it is like to be that organism.” Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83, 1974, p. 323.
347. “I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat.” Ibid., p. 324.
348. “We cannot, coming into something new . . .” Oppenheimer, Robert. “Analogy in Science.” The American Psychologist 11, 3, 1956, pp. 129–130.
349. Metaphor “plays an essential role . . .” and “Theory change, in particular, is accompanied by a change . . .” Cited in: Metaphor and Thought. Ortony, Andrew, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 24.
350. “I too play with symbols . . .” Cited in: Gentner, Dedre, and Jeziorski, Michael. “The Shift from Metaphor to Analogy in Western Science.” In: Metaphor and Thought. Ortony, Andrew, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 447–480.
351. A metaphor “is not to be considered as an argument . . .” Cited in: Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor. Johnson, Mark, ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981, p. 13.
352. “We are never less the slaves of metaphor . . .” Lewis, C. S. “Bluspels and Flalansferes.” In: Rehabilitations and Other Essays, p. 155.
353. “If our thinking is ever true . . .” Ibid., p. 158.
354. “I was absolute master of my old dressing gown . . .” Diderot, Denis. Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works. Translated by Jacques Barzun and Ralph H. Bowen with an introduction by Ralph H. Bowen. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2001, pp. 309–310.
355. “An unpleasant peculiarity in his voice . . .” Notice of the death of Edwin Paxton Hood in the New York Times, June 24, 1885. Available at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D07E3DB1439E533A25757C2A9609C94649FD7CF.
356. “Etymologically, [parable] signifies . . .” Hood, Edwin Paxton. The World of Proverb and Parable. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1885, p. 87.
357. When we read a story, our brains plot everything that’s going on . . . Speer, Nicole K., et al. “Reading Stories Activates Neural Representations of Visual and Motor Experiences.” Psychological Science 20, 8, 2009, pp. 989–999.
358. The evolutionary advantage of stories. Dutton, Denis. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009, pp. 117–119.
359. The Managalese. See: McKellin, William H. “Allegory and Inference: Intentional Ambiguity in Managalese Negotiations.” In: Disentangling: Conflict Discourse in Pacific Societies. Watson-Gegeo, Karen Ann, and White, Geoffrey M., eds. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 335–363. See also McKellin, William H. “Putting Down Roots: Information in the Language of Managalese Exchange.” In: Dangerous Words: Language and Politics in the Pacific. Brenneis, Donald Lawrence, and Myers, Fred R., eds. New York: New York University Press, 1984, pp. 108–127.
360. The betel nut parable. Cited in: Holyoak, Keith J., and Thagard, Paul. Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, p. 215.
361. “The trial balloons or political Rorschach tests of social relations.” McKellin, William H. “Allegory and Inference: Intentional Ambiguity in Managalese Negotiations.” In: Disentangling: Conflict Discourse in Pac
ific Societies, p. 336.
362. The boy and the nettles. Aesop. Aesop’s Fables. Translated by V. S. Vernon Jones. Introduction by G. K. Chesterton. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1994, p. 66.
363. “The wit of one, the wisdom of many.” Cited in: Hood, Edwin Paxton. The World of Proverb and Parable, p. 65
364. It is hard to dismount from a tiger. Merwin, W. S. East Window: The Asian Translations. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1998, p. 134.
365. Chase two hares, both get away. Ibid., p. 96.
366. Ancient Sumerian proverb collections. Gordon, Edmund I. Sumerian Proverbs: Glimpses of Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1968, p. 20.
