Importance of Metaphor

The words They have a precise meaning. To find out, we consulted the dictionary, where we checked the different meanings of each of them. This reality does not mean that a word is limited to a certain number of meanings, since A word can be used as a symbol to refer to an aspect other than the one it is naming. In this case we speak of the metaphor.

Thus, when we want to express an idea through a different element we are using the language metaphorically. There are several types of metaphor, as well as different formulas to elaborate them. In any case, as a general idea, the metaphor is a rhetorical resource that combines two terms: one of them is real. and the other is imaginary and both express a similarity, since it is possible to communicate a similar aspect between the two. An example may be clarifying. If it is affirmed "your lips are rubies" we have two concepts that are identified despite the fact that they apparently have nothing in common. Lips and rubies united in a verse manage to suggest beauty.

In the literature the metaphor is commonly used in the poetic field, where the different figures appear rhetoric: the simile, the paradox, the hyperbole and a long etcetera of technical resources typical of the poetry.

Although poetry is the genuine field of metaphor, it is also used in everyday language. It is a way of embellishing expressions, of enriching them. Thus we achieved that the phenomenon of communication acquire a literary nuance.

The metaphor shows that a word goes beyond its meaning. And precisely the set of possibilities to use words in a different sense than usual is what is called a trope. The trope would be the general idea of ​​the different possible combinations when combining words. The best-known type of trope is the metaphor, but it is not the only one, metonymy and synecdoche being other of its variants.

The capacity of the metaphor as a resource is so powerful that, sometimes, we use it almost without realizing it. In this case we are speaking metaphorically.

The metaphor is used as a descriptive element in genres other than poetry. This is what happens with gregueria, a word invented by the writer Spanish Ramón Gómez de la Serna, who defined gregueria as the fusion between humor and metaphor, a highly original way of referring to reality. Again, an example will help to understand the idea: the shoes are cells for five.

Language is an immense puzzle of combinations and the metaphor is a very valid technical device for giving a simple message a special elegance.