Kamil Wiśniewski - linguist, translator, and philosopher :)

Dead Metaphors

Metaphorical expressions are and have always been present not only in human cognition, but also in language. Some of them are difficult to perceive because of their inconspicuous nature, or usage, as the realization of the metaphor LIFE IS A CONTAINER ‘I’ve had a full life’, for example. Other metaphors are easily recognizable to the majority of language users as ‘My wife whose hair is a brush fire’, for instance.
Linguists concerned with metaphors describe them in numerous ways. Apart from the classification presented by Lakoff and Johnson, there is another generally accepted taxonomy. Depending on the degree of conventionality of use and whether the expression is to be found in a dictionary, or is utterly novel, scholars distinguish between dead, inactive and active metaphors. Dead metaphors are those expressions which were frequently used for a long time and therefore they are no longer perceived as being metaphorical. In many cases, dead metaphors have dictionary entries and are also known as idioms. For example the expression ‘red herring’ is nowadays used only metaphorically to denote a distraction and it does not have a corresponding literal meaning. The phrase used to have a much more literal, and highly specific meaning, but, as it is hard to imagine what that would be as used in its original meaning, it is clearly a dead metaphor. Other examples of dead metaphors might include ‘to deliver a speech’, ‘some grounds for complaint’, ‘eye of a needle’, or ‘windfall’ (Goatly, 1997:33).
Inactive metaphors are those expressions which have metaphorical meaning, but also whose meaning can be tracked to its roots. Thus, they might be ambiguous and have, in fact, multiple meanings. In inactive metaphors, the Topic may be relatively fixed by convention, or by another meaning of a given word. Some examples of inactive metaphors might include: ‘deep financial cuts’, ‘fox’ to denote a cunning person instead of a dog-like animal with reddish-brown fur, or ‘crane’ meaning a tall machine used by builders for lifting heavy things, which is similar to a tall water bird from which the name derives (Goatly, 1997:33).
Active metaphors are in many cases those expressions which are not a part of the lexicon. They are dependent on the context, they are to a large extent not predictable and they have no fixed meaning. Andrew Goatly (Goatly, 1997:34) has juxtaposed dead, inactive and active metaphors in a very clear way that explains all the differences between the types of metaphors.
It needs to be added that all the types of metaphors with which literary scholars are in most cases concerned and which can be found in Lakoff and Johnson’s classification are active metaphors. they are certainly, therefore, a crucial part of a speaker’s knowledge of his own language and therefore are a part of his mental lexicon. PDF