A Database of Metaphor
March 27, 2012 6:06 PM   Subscribe

The Mind is a Metaphor. A database of thousands of metaphors organized by category, like 18th century, Liquid, or Jacobite. It's maintained by University of Virginia English Professor Brad Pasanek.
posted by shivohum (19 comments total) 107 users marked this as a favorite
 
Neat!
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:14 PM on March 27, 2012


Oh my gods I love this.
posted by strixus at 6:18 PM on March 27, 2012


This is, like, awesome.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:34 PM on March 27, 2012


Nice find, thanks for posting!
posted by carter at 6:48 PM on March 27, 2012


My love for this is a clicked exclamation.
posted by carsonb at 6:50 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]


yumm...I'm sure many of these will come in handy.
posted by quazichimp at 6:52 PM on March 27, 2012


This is this!
posted by TwelveTwo at 7:01 PM on March 27, 2012


I never met a phor I didn't like.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:23 PM on March 27, 2012


I'm in love, swooning. A school girl on prom night in a graceful spin with the handsome prom king. There need to be more of these.
posted by Saxon Kane at 7:47 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]


I can't favorite this hard enough. Thank you!
posted by mochapickle at 7:48 PM on March 27, 2012


For a brief moment I thought this was a giant compendium of metaphors from literature of all sorts, which would have been giant yippee, but sadly that's not the case. From the About page: While the database does include metaphors from classical sources, from Shakespeare and Milton, from the King James Bible, and from more recent texts, it does not pretend to any depth or density of coverage in literature other than that of the British eighteenth century.
posted by storybored at 8:21 PM on March 27, 2012


Looking through these made me simile.
posted by mikurski at 8:34 PM on March 27, 2012


I don't really get this. Surely there's no point in attempting to collect or catalogue something so ephemeral yet so indefinitely large in scope?

And then many of the entries don't appear to be properly metaphors. "Fancy may over-rule reason"? Is it that he thinks only literal kings can literally over-rule things? I wouldn't have said the core meaning of 'over-rule' is that narrowly restricted.

Not that the stuff in the database is uninteresting in itself. Maybe I'm looking for a rigour that's not meant to be there and I should just see it as a kind of large post-modernish anthology?
posted by Segundus at 1:31 AM on March 28, 2012


Finally, it should be emphasized that this electronic collection of snippets is, above all, an effort in search and text mining. Which means it is more of a heap or helter-skelter anthology than online archive.

See, you didn't bother to read that, did you Segundus?
posted by Segundus at 4:45 AM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


TwelveTwo: This is this!

No! This is that!
posted by Kattullus at 5:30 AM on March 28, 2012


Wait.

This is like that!
That is like this!
posted by TwelveTwo at 11:44 AM on March 28, 2012


I don't have anything intelligent to say - just, gosh, what a brilliant idea for a research project and I hope it calls up some interesting patterns. Thank you for posting it.
posted by lucien_reeve at 1:19 PM on March 28, 2012


I was in a room with this man at the annual meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies last week. All the speakers pointed to him when they cited his work. It was pretty neat.
posted by sy at 3:51 PM on March 28, 2012


Segundus: I think that what Segundus meant was that Segundus understands that this is a heap and not an archive, but Segundus thinks that a heap isn't very useful and thinks an archive would be infinitely more useful.
posted by Saxon Kane at 6:16 PM on March 28, 2012


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