Not The End of Metaphoric Madness: Metaphoric Madness, #4

By Harish Kumar

Is googly a metaphor for surprises of all sorts? Can hat tricks turn contrarian to transform into a metaphor for successive defeats? Where do you use umpire and referee as metaphors? Are they really two different metaphors? As you sprint towards the finish line, as the start line becomes a mere blur in the circuit of life, which metaphor should be your focus on?

Why is your finish line only as good as your start line? How are these two metaphors connected? Is sprint a metaphor for any short and speedy spell of running? When are you likely to short circuit the circuit metaphor? Can stymie be a metaphor for frustrating your initiatives totally, stem and root? When does your food turn into a mulligan stew?

How did the common defence strategy of sandbagging turn into a billiards metaphor? Marathon and steeplechase, which is a metaphor for endurance and which is a metaphor for perseverance? Is volley a metaphor for a hail of compliments? Should salvo surprise and sear to be a metaphor? When do you turn gambit into a weasel metaphor?

Why should chequered be a metaphor for our basic life philosophy? Which pawn metaphor is extremely negative? When do you run the risk of stalemating the stalemate metaphor? When does stalemate on ground become a diplomatic checkmate?

All metaphoric googlies! Springing nasty surprises and visiting you unannounced! Do not get caught off guard!! With Not the End of Metaphoric Madness, you need not feel checkmated. This Book 4 is sure to help you out of your metaphoric dilemmas. It will also assist you in upholding metaphoric propriety and ensure you do not commit a serious metaphoric faux pas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harish Kumar
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393487869

Book preview

Metaphors from What you Play

Metaphors from Cricket

Those who play cricket are supposed to be gentlemen, men in gentle white flannels. Today, neither the men are necessarily gentle nor their flannels are necessarily white.

Yet, cricket continues to contribute scores of words for lay metaphoric vocabulary. Wonder, most cricket words double up as nice metaphors and are as exciting as a close and fiercely-fought match. 

Just like the legendary game, cricket metaphors are unending. You may ask a fellow businessman what his batting average is, meaning what his average earnings are. You may even question a shifty party colleague who he is batting for. Finally, you may bowl a nice lady over with your charms.

As a businessman, you may call it quits and draw the stumps with an eye on public or social work. Or, willy-nilly get clean bowled by a tenacious taxman who comes up with a steep retro-demand based on some strange arithmetic.

As an actor, you may have a good innings, remaining not-out for a long time, going on and on, meaning successful. Why, with three box-office hits bursting the charts successively, you may even go on to score a nice hat trick.

You may then even be right in not trusting people who swing both ways, like those bowling bullies who are unpredictable. Well, if you bank on such shifty swingers, you may end up batting on a sticky wicket, using again a cricket metaphor.

We may go on and on like this with cricket words, turning them all into sporty word-pictures. Thank heavens, almost all cricket words are pictorial and thus double up as workaday metaphors for usual and routine communication.

This versatility of cricket words owes largely to history, to yesteryear’s colonial supremacy of the English, and to their penchant for playing cricket out in their sunny open-to-the-sky colonies, both for pleasure and power. Thus, cricket words effortlessly passed into common currency as live metaphors.  

You may quote George Bernard Shaw’s sceptic saying about eleven fools playing. But, remember cricket has gifted the world of communication much more than the meagre eleven street-smart metaphors.

As you play cricket in the true spirit of the game, you foster great team spirit. Thus, when you use cricket words as work-a-day metaphors, you go on to foster classic metaphoric camaraderie and end up saying things with a touch of equity. So, cricket metaphors do create communication cousins with a historical link.

Well, more than 125 countries play cricket and there are just 107-odd International Cricket Council-recognised countries having their own national cricket teams.

But, the whole world (196 countries) loves to play the game of cricket metaphors. With free sprinkling of cricket metaphors in your diction, you make your communication sporty, vivid and vivacious.

Not surprising that cricket metaphors are popular with almost every one on this globe. Why, even among non-English-speaking populace.  

Thus, the expression "it is not cricket", to mean it is not just and fair, has become quite universal.You hear it being spoken even in lands that do not play and follow the game of cricket.

Why, you hear it being used in reference to even matters that are not related to cricket.

So, here is an appeal to the users of this final volume in the Metaphoric Madness series: Do not turn away from using cricket words as regular metaphors.

Like them, adopt them, use them in your daily writing-speaking and make all of them work for you.

Remember cricket words come packed in colourful metaphoric ribbons of vivacity, sportsmanship, team spirit, camaraderie and celebration of universal companionship.

In the following pages, you will read in length, with published examples, on how common cricket words - googly, pitch, hat trick, bouncer and innings - turn into handy and handsome metaphors.

For a moment, just before jumping on to the metaphoric googly, pause and ponder over the following two vital and pertinent issues.

One, test cricket is a testing duel, both in terms of time and stamina, strategy and strength. But, doesn’t it test viewers’ patience? Doesn’t it face the test of survival these days, courtesy other shorter and snappier formats?

Well, whatever the format, cricket itself is a metaphor for fairness in human dealings. Perhaps, that is why cricket has not forfeited its epithet gentleman’s game.

What follows logically is this: In itself, cricket has become an enduring and eternal metaphor for fair play. 

Two, when you hear all these cricket metaphors, don’t you feel like being thrown right into a vantage position to be able to watch a match live and relate that first-hand experience to what is being told to you?  

Let me take here the liberty of liberally employing cricket metaphors to conclude this preamble.

Use your bat deftly to tackle all the sexy cricket metaphor deliveries you are about to face in the coming pages.

This is your goal right now: stay at your language wicket to score metaphoric runs. Good luck!

Googly

Let the word googly not surprise you. In cricketing parlance, a googly is a sort of delivery bowled by a right-arm leg-spinner. Appreciate, as a metaphor googly is a nice contribution from cricket.

You need to know in and out the googly metaphor, and understand its usage rules so that you are able to employ the metaphor effortlessly as a common use-everywhere and use-anytime word picture. And avoid the kind of abusage googly is often put through. 

It is essential for you to know how is this googly bowled, how did the delivery get its name and how is the googly metaphor being abused today. Shockingly repulsive, current non-cricketing usage of googly is an abusage at best.

One, how does a spin bowler go about bowling a googly? While a regular leg-break spins to the off side from the leg, away from a right-handed batsman, a googly spins the other way. That is from off to leg, into a right handed batsman. That is so different from an off-break delivery.

Two, how did googly get its name? What is the origin of the word? To answer that we need to begin at the real beginning. Thanks to inventor Bernard Bosanquet, the cricketing world got its googly.

Not surprising that this googly is often called a Bosie or a Bosey, as a thanksgiving eponym honouring the creative genius of Bosanquet.

However, eyebrows are often raised over Chamber Dictionary dubbing this received etymology and its eponymous influence dubious, though the popular perception differs.

Finally, here is why googly’s non-cricketing usage today as a metaphor is blatant abusage.

As a cricket enthusiast, you should be aware that a googly is often considered to be the major strike weapon in the arsenal of a leg-spin bowler. And it works often as a lethal wicket-taking delivery of a performing spinner.

More importantly, a googly is used not frequently, just off and on, and that gives the delivery its surprise striking effectiveness and value. A googly rears its head rarely.  

A googly is all the more dreaded when it is released by a googly expert. Such googlies are often dreaded, even by all those accomplished batsmen. For, the googly always springs a surprise, visits the batsman at the crease unannounced.  

That is why the metaphor googly needs to be used for surprising strategic attacks, or just attacks, verbal or non-verbal. You may now say your boss delivered a googly when he told you in the morning meeting that you are one of the employees marked for receiving a pink slip soon.

When your consultant works out your tax liability for the year and says your outgo was expected to double, sure he was delivering an accounting googly. Likewise, your senior partner’s confession that he was looking out for a more muscular partner to replace you was a lethal business googly.

Indeed all these are googlies. For three reasons. One, they were all attacks and had a negative impact on you. Two, they were all surprising, they came to you when you were least expecting them. And three, you found it difficult facing or playing them. 

Thus, googly is a metaphor for surprise attacks and such attacks need not be only physical. However, today as a metaphor, googly is abused with gay abandon. Here is how.

Abusage one. You hear your friend saying that while discussing domestic holiday plans his father delivered a googly by suggesting they go overseas to the Bahamas. The suggestion was surprising but it was not an attack. In fact, it was a pleasant surprise. So, googlies are not metaphors for pleasant surprises. 

Abusage two. When your prized employee tells you he wants to put in his papers, do not say it was a googly. The reason: though you might have been taken aback, though it had a shock value, your employee’s motive was not to fell you or pin you down.

So, do not use googly as a metaphor for surprises or shocks administered by those whose motives are not to strike you down or harm you. Never use googly as a metaphor