Metaphoric Madness: Metaphoric Madness, #1

By Harish Kumar

Birth, dream, fruits, mother, street,……………………well,……………………….

Do not shrug your shoulders dismissively. Do not wave all these words away as plainly pedestrian. Many more Simple Simons such as these straddle across the English linguistic landscape as powerful and potent metaphors. Only that you should know when, where, and how to use them all as pictorial metaphors.

Metaphoric Madness will precisely help you gain that rare expertise. Using simple words as sexy metaphors for a variety of emotions, conditions and circumstances is actually multiplying your word power manifold. And discovering artful metaphors in mundane words is actually mastering quality in communication. Ideally, treat this book as the first leg in your new metaphor journey.

You are sure to find Metaphoric Madness absorbing and addictive. That addiction is certain to prove creative and constructive. In more ways than one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harish Kumar
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393474609

Book preview

Metaphors from Where you Live

Metaphors from the Kitchen

Kitchen is where you cook your food. As you cook your meal, you use up some ingredients and press into service a few equipment. Ever thought you can use words from the kitchen in your usual talk colourfully?

Kitchen words do make colourful metaphors. Set aside their literal senses and see their mesmerising figurative and metaphorical interpretations. There you have now simply beautiful and powerful sentences.

Here, for your first metaphor week, you have 35 words from your immediate environment that can be used as metaphors. Effectively, that means 35 and more new words, at the rate of five for each day of the week.

The common kitchen metaphors in this section are: concoct, garnish, scramble, simmer and sizzle. All simple words, known words, with so much magic in their wonderful wombs.

Concoct

This is a transitive verb. Literally, concoct means to cook by mixing various ingredients. We generally talk about trying to concoct a crispy meal from leftovers.

As a metaphor, use the word to mean employing skill and intelligence to devise, to invent. In other words, concoct means to contrive, to invent, to make up and to fabricate.

For instance, when your indisciplined employee turns up late, as usual, he concocts a story about having been waylaid. It is clear that he is making up a story. That is, what he is telling you is pure fiction, a made-up account.

Here is how the most-read The Economist uses the metaphor. In its issue dated 11 May 2013, it says: "Strategy consultants concoct novel solutions to unique problems, which is hard."

Again, in its issue dated 7 February 2013, you find this statement: "TICIO is small compared to TRAIL, and cheaper to concoct than the complex protein is."

So, next time someone is giving you a false account of something, he is concocting a story, fabricating, or simply, leading you up the garden path. Do not believe him.

Well, not only reports are concocted. Inept and insecure politicians concoct conspiracy theories to secure their seats and corrupt heads of corporations concoct financial statements. 

Thus, concoct is a negative metaphor. Whatever is the motive, when there is an attempt to concoct, it is not in good spirit. 

Garnish

In its literal sense, garnish means to adorn food, to decorate it. Simply, to garnish is to embellish the food. Literally, the word garnish is almost always used in the context of cooked food that is ready for consumption. That is not the case when you use garnish as a metaphor.

In which case, you can use garnish to mean beautifying your creative work. But, used more frequently as a metaphor to describe how creative writing is made more appealing.

Thus, you embellish and adorn your writing with a host of devices -  pleasing prefaces, brainy blurbs, thumping testimonials, et al. Now, venture beyond writing and garnish your speech with wit, humour, anecdotes and quotable quotes.

Consider these examples. Say, the corporation attempts to garnish its annual report with glowing tributes from satisfied shareholders. Or, say with sarcasm, the political speaker wants to garnish his speech with unmentionable invectives. 

However, mind you, garnish is not a negative word. So, better not to use it as a negative metaphor for window-dressing, half-hearted patch-ups and sham crack cover-ups. Of course, there is another word for that.

Use the garnish metaphor for your attempts to beautify your presentations with enchanting examples and to gild your