After over a month in bed, the entire staff of the Metaphor Observatory is showing limited signs of recovery. We are currently editing a post comparing the two main metaphor systems used by the media to describe the American campaigns – the race and the battle. This will likely get posted this week, though it [...]

This is a growing collection of Metaphor Observatory posts involving the economic crisis. The continued perplexity and growing depth kept the crisis at the top of headlines. Financial Crisis Solved: Inject Capital Into Credit Addicts Crisis Metaphors Surge: Our Cup Overloadeth Outsourcing Blame: Metaphors of the Economic Crisis Metaphor in Financial Crisis Metaphors Blog this! [...]

The overload of metaphor used to describe the financial crisis and consequent bailout has caused our Metaphor Observation Circuits (MOC’s) to blow. Please consult a technician. Metaphors Blog this! Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post Print [...]

You know a metaphor is contemporary and fashionable when it is used as the hinge for anachronistic humor. Today, and briefly, we cite the appearance of “existential meltdown” in the caveman series of Geico ads (“It’s so easy a caveman can do it!”). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIFyITQGjYE&playnext=1&list=PLBDD23695D1DEE103&index=12 The rise of meltdown and fallout continue, while fusion begins its [...]

It’s the difference between night and day! A visitor sent me this question, which I thought may interest readers… Mr. Casnig, I googled across your website, The Metaphor Observatory, in search of metaphors that use night and dawn figuratively and literally. I’m doing research and a thesis tentatively on extended metaphors in creative nonfiction but [...]

This blog entry, surrounding Stephen Colbert’s coining of the term psychopharma-parenting, is created to account for the variations in spelling. According to the Colbert Report, the word is hyphenated. However, we have observed that Mr. Colbert’s facts may not necessarily agree with Mr. Webster’s or Mr. Oxford’s, and so offer this variant, more-popular spelling. For [...]

Just a footnote to the regular (notice I didn’t say “normal”) visitors of this blog: I’m still here at the Observatory, pounding on the keyboard, at one tenth of one percent of my full monkey complement. When the other 999 monkeys arrive, I’ll post a few clumps about the Chocolate City, the Red Storm Rising [...]

High octane prices drive metaphor into high gear… As mentioned previously on this blog, we noted a general rise in energy-related metaphors of late. Today, thanks to a few dipstick speculators and greasy pirates we are forced to give fuel its day in the sun. Besides, we’re stuck at home with no money for gas. [...]

Tom Cruise’s and Katie Holmes’ metaphor baby. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes just had a little girl. Her weight, at seven pounds, seven ounces, her height twenty inches, and her name – well, it depends on who you talk to. The truth of a name is in its meaning. Dale Carnegie found that by using [...]

Looks like fire metaphors are burning up… The Observatory has detected a significant increase of the use of fire and fire-making metaphors in products, marketing and possibly newscasts. Though this is too soon to be branded a trend or anomally, it does warrant further tracking. Among this class of etherly bodies, we have sighted increased [...]