Word: metaphor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...addiction to.what critics call the pathetic fallacy-the giving of human traits or feelings to inanimate objects. The poorest have the quality of a grownup reaching too far for effect ("this little incinerator of so many lost dreams that is called ash-tray"), and a weakness for the repeated metaphor that finds nights, houses, clouds and tears all to be the color of blood. Yet the best are written with undeniable charm, and in much the same headlong fashion that a child runs...
...good sermon-as long as it preaches what they practice. They are also increasingly symbol-minded-provided the symbols do not excite the mental so much as the sentimental faculties ("It isn't enough that boy meets girl," one playwright complained. "Now they want to know what he metaphor"). They also have a kindly feeling of superiority for an old maid-if she isn't too old. And everybody loves a cowboy picture...
...That derives from a Fleet Street metaphor that dog does not eat dog. I continued the metaphor from the canine world...
...whipped up his speech. He made dry runs on Kinescope film to test his delivery, buffed and polished each polysyllabic pearl of syntax and rhetoric before his pretty blonde wife. This week he was ready with a keynote speech that was charged with a rare potential of metaphor, simile and alliteration, borrowed liberally from orators ranging from Cicero to Daniel Webster to Billy Graham...
...metaphor may seem out of place in a tennis preview, but there is no other word which accurately describes the game of Dale Junta who has moved from the top spot on last year's freshman squad to become the number two man on the varsity...