The Orange Sun Danced on the Morning's Stage

Metaphor.  A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance (moonlight sleeping on a bank.  And tear our pleasures with rough strife/Through the iron gates of life.  Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest/And passage through these looms/God has ordered motion, but ordained no rest).  It may consist, as the examples show, of a single word or an elaborated idea.  The virtue of metaphor is that it permits us to say a great deal in a few words.  Furthermore it sets up in the mind of the reader or listener a creative process that makes him amplify the idea and come to feel tht it is his own and hence to accept it.

Metaphors do not suggest merely resemblances.  They evoke concomitant images and often call up emotions that strengthen or enlarge upon the intended meaning.  Thus when Macbeth says that he has supped full with horror, the very homeliness of the metaphor (to which many eighteenth century critics objected as being undignified, "unworthy" of poetry) heightens the effect; it is as if Macbeth had come to accept horror as his everyday food.  And so when Hamlet, considering the effect of his "mousetrap" on his uncle's conscience, says:

If his occulted guilt

Do not itself unkennel in that one speech

It is a damned ghost that we have seen

And my imaginations are as foul

As Vulcan's stithy

he has employed two good metaphors.  His uncle's guilt has been likened to a skulking dog and his own mind to a stithy or an anvil.  The latter is particularly good because it suggests not only the dirt, the foulness of his imaginations, but the ceaseless, metallic hammering of them in his brain.

Sometimes when I write, I find myself incorporating metaphors without even thinking.  This helps cut down on the amount of words I use.  Hopefully, I haven't used up my quota.  Reference my article (Too Many Left Turns). Why don't you grab a metaphor and come dance with me today. 

Referenced:  A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage

Bergen and Cornelia Evans 1957