17 Comments

I find it almost impossible to not see the original post as a joke or parody. Has it been confirmed that the author of the source wasn't simply trolling people who are sensitive to this kind of thing?

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I wondered the same thing, but apparently it is real. The Guardian story that I linked to describes the source. It has, of course, become very difficult to tell real from parody these days. Malcolm Muggeridge said decades ago that satire had become impossible because not matter how absurd an idea you dreamed up for your satire, the real world had already done something more absurd. He should see us now.

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I don't envy anyone trying to write political satire in the last decade!

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Nailed it!

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An image both violent and blasphemous ✅

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Excellent article!

Long live metaphors ;)

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I agree with the thrust of this (if “thrust” is not too dynamic and forceful). I’m not sure if the original post deserves the intellectual energy spent on “taking it down” but I enjoyed reading it.

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Not a lot of energy spent. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. (Ooops! I did it again.)

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“I performed a task that was very easy.”

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Well said! This awful trend seems to be picking up steam. (If you're looking to raise your blood pressure, check out this initiative by Stanford: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguage.pdf)

But you're right to point out that metaphors serve a conceptual function literal language simply can't replace. I might start my own initiative and try to use all the forbidden metaphors as creatively as I can :-)

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I'll toss my hat in the ring here. As I read through the list, it occurred to me that the language in the left column is what I often heard in my corporate job in a largely male environment (software development). My day-to-day activities are relatively peaceful - dancing, t'ai chi, camping, and graphic design classes. I'm not hearing this nearly as often and don't miss it.

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It hadn't occurred to me until you mentioned it, but it would be interesting to study whether there is a difference in chosen metaphors between men and women, and if so whether that holds true over time. And, indeed, it would be interesting to study whether one sex uses metaphors more or less than the other.

It would make sense if it turned out that male writers used martial metaphors more often and female writers used domestic and social metaphors more often. It might not be the case, though, since metaphors are generally learned in conversation, and so might turn out to be broadly the same between the sexes. I wonder if anyone has actually studied this.

Its also interesting that you chose a violent metaphor in your first sentence. To throw ones hat in the ring is a metaphor from boxing, where men would challenge other men to fight by throwing their hats into the ring. Of course, most people who use that phrase today would not be thinking of that custom, which has long died out. I suspected the origin was something like that, but I had to look it up to be sure.

This also points to something interesting: the tendency of some metaphors to become less violent-seeming over time, while other non-violent metaphors come to seem more violent over time, as is the case with several in this list, and as was the case in the furor over the song Baby It's Cold Outside a couple of years back: https://gmbaker.net/baby-its-scold-outside/

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Excellent thoughts. I've written much on this weird tendency to water down language and outright change the definitions of words. I see something nefarious in this.

Whoever made this list is advocating for a cowardly form of writing, devoid of risk-taking and would seemingly love to quash creativity and even art itself.

This makes me want to include more of these "violent metaphors" in my own writing.

Thank you, I believe I will. 😁

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Go forth and conquer.

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Amazing article! It seems that in the cancel culture even the good old metaphors are being sentenced to death (no pun intended 🙄).

This trend, which might have started with noble intentions, is leading us to soften everything we say so as not to offend anyone, but I sometimes worry that we are paving the way to weaker, less profound debates (I admit that I have soften that last sentence…). That would be terrible for our society, as being deprived of meaningful debates limits our ability to evolve our thinking and our understanding of the world around us.

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Kindness and respect are a good thing in a debate. They help to keep the debate focused on issues rather than people. But it seems that today we have weaponized kindness and respect and turned them into bludgeons.

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Couldn’t agree with this more—I hate this recent trend of toning down everything around us, this switch to blandness because it shouldn’t offend anyone. “Beige-ing”, I like to call it, ha. I really wish people said what they meant, and meant what they say.

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