Metaphors are beacons for the mind. How to discover new ones? Creativity can't be bottled, but there are productive patterns, templates which may be worth using to jump-start the imagination. For instance, Z. A. Melzak (in Bypasses; A Simple Approach to Complexity, 1983) describes "kennings" — particular types of metaphor from Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry. He and other sources offer some classics:
- sea-stallion = ship
- ring-giver = lord
- battle-gleam = sword
- battle-adder = arrow
- whale-road = swan-path = water-street = sea
- hate-bite = wound
- peace-weaver = wife
The basic design principle of a kenning is the subtle suggestion of an analogy, by an outline of its shadow or a sketch of its edges. A ship crosses the sea as a stallion crosses the land — that is, ship is to sea as stallion is to land, or more compactly "ship : sea :: stallion : land". So sea-stallion implies ship. Inverting the equation in various ways, land-ship means stallion, a stallion's sea is the land, and a ship's land is the sea. Some patterns work better than others. If "cow : grass :: car : gasoline", then grass is a cow's gasoline. (Saying that gasoline is a car's grass is more obscure. Grass has too many diverse meanings; gasoline is relatively specific.)
Some samples:
- testimony : oath :: contract : signature –> contract-oath = signature
- star : galaxy :: tree : forest –> star-forest = galaxy
- rhyme : word :: harmony : music –> music-rhyme = harmony (and word-harmony = rhyme)
- asthma : breath :: clot : heart –> breath-clot = asthma
- shell : turtle :: house : person –> turtle-house = shell
Besides being fun themselves, kennings may suggest escape routes from conventionality in diverse circumstances. For instance, in that last example the "turtle-house" pattern when inverted yields a cute term for a stay-at-home person: house-turtle!
Wednesday, November 17, 1999 at 06:38:31 (EST) = 1999-11-17
(correlates: CreativeDevices, DependentVariables, AugustAptorisms, ...)