Meaning of dead metaphor | Babel Free

Definitions

A former metaphor which has in effect lost its metaphorical status and become literal.

Examples

“An objectivist might grant that digest an idea was once a metaphor, but he would claim that it is no longer metaphorical. For him it is a “dead metaphor,” one that has become conventionalized and has its own literal meaning.”

“Typically, dead metaphors have been considered a characteristic of ordinary language, and live metaphors a crucial trait of poetic language.”

“It is meaningless to speak of the soul in the twenty-first century […]. It has become a dead metaphor, one of those words that survive in language long after a culture has lost faith in the concept, like an empty carapace that remains intact years after its animating organism has died.”

CEFR level