[6]
We do this either because it is necessary or to make
our meaning clearer or, as I have already said, to produce a decorative effect. When it secures none of
these results, our metaphor will be out of place. As
an example of a necessary metaphor I may quote the
following usages in vogue with peasants when they
call a vinebud gemma, a gem (what other term is
there which they could use?), or speak of the crops
being thirsty or the fruit suffering. For the same
reason we speak of a hard or rough man, there being
no literal term for these temperaments.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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