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Jun 6, 2019 · "Mixed metaphors are frowned on because they create a confusion instead of a fusion of effects, like the 'Irish bull' about the man who, whenever he opened his mouth, put his foot in it" (Louis Untermeyer, The Pursuit of Poetry).
- Catachresis
Quintilian on Metaphor and Catachresis "The first thing that...
- Lingo
AP Deputy Managing Editor for Standards Tom Kent lays out...
- Organizational Metaphor
Organizational metaphors provide information about the value...
- Creative Metaphor
A creative metaphor is an original comparison that calls...
- What Are Mixed Metaphors
As defined in our glossary, a mixed metaphor is a succession...
- What Are Malaphors
"Malaphors aren't quite malapropisms and aren't quite mixed...
- What is Conceit
Examples and Observations "In general one may say that a...
- Dead Metaphors
Examples and Observations "Kansas City is oven hot, dead...
- Catachresis
Jun 21, 2022 · A well-crafted metaphor uses consistent imagery ("hitting the nail on the head”); when you start mixing imagery ("hitting the nail on the nose"), you can create a type of malapropism known as a mixed metaphor.
- Using Mixed Metaphors
- Examples of Mixed Metaphors
- Sources
In "Garner's Modern American Usage", Bryan A. Garner offers this classic example of a mixed metaphor from a speech by Boyle Roche in the Irish Parliament: This sort of mixed metaphor may occur when a speaker is so familiar with the figurative sense of a phrase ("smell a rat," "nip in the bud") that he fails to recognize the absurdity that results f...
"So now what we are dealing with is the rubber meeting the road, and instead of biting the bullet on these issues, we just want to punt.""[T]he bill is mostly a stew of spending on existing programs, whatever their warts may be.""A friend of mine, talking about the Democratic presidential candidates, tossed out a wonderful mixed metaphor: 'This is awfully weak tea to have to hang your hat on.'""The mayor has a heart as big as the Sahara for protecting 'his' police officers, and that is commendable. Unfortunately, he also often strips his gears by failing to engage the clutch when shiftin...Lynne Truss, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation", 2003 Chicago Tribune, cited by The New Yorker, August 13, 2007 The New York Times, January 27, 2009 Montgomery Advertiser, Alabama, cited by The New Yorker, November 16, 1987 Bob Herbert, "Behind the Curtain," The New York Times, November 27, 2007 Thomas L. Friedman, ...
- Richard Nordquist
If you decide to use mixed metaphors in your writing, always make sure you know the difference between metaphors and personification, as well as what each metaphor truly means. Mixed metaphors can be very witty and clever – but only if you use them right.
Nov 3, 2022 · Metaphors can mix in ways that compound and work together to produce new meanings that may carry their own bias. This is especially true when metaphors combine to produce a single image.
Jan 1, 2010 · The metaphors satisfy the two basic conditions for mixed metaphor: (1) they occur in textual adjacency, i.e. within a single metaphor cluster, and (2) they do not (for the most part) share any imagistic ontology or any direct inferential entailments between them.
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A mixed metaphor is a literary device that occurs when two or more dissimilar metaphors are fused to forge a comparison, typically creating a ludicrous effect. A mixed metaphor is not a common literary device that we often find in poetry or literature.
