Word.ws English Dictionary

dead metaphor

dead metaphor noun: a former metaphor which has in effect lost its metaphorical status and become literal.

Noun

dead metaphor (plural dead metaphors)

  1. A former metaphor which has in effect lost its metaphorical status and become literal.
    • An objectivist might grant that digest an idea was once a metaphor, but he would claim that it is no longer metaphorical. For him it is a “dead metaphor,” one that has become conventionalized and has its own literal meaning.1980, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, chapter 27, in Metaphors We Live By
    • Typically, dead metaphors have been considered a characteristic of ordinary language, and live metaphors a crucial trait of poetic language.2009, Cornelia Müller, Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 36

Forms of dead metaphor

pluraldead metaphors

Questions about dead metaphor

What does dead metaphor mean?
Dead metaphor means a former metaphor which has in effect lost its metaphorical status and become literal.
What part of speech is dead metaphor?
Dead metaphor is a noun.
What is the plural of dead metaphor?
The plural of dead metaphor is dead metaphors.

Words near dead metaphor in the dictionary

  1. dead men tell no tales
  2. dead men walking
  3. dead men's bells
  4. dead men's fingers
  5. dead men's shoes
  6. dead metaphor
  7. dead metaphors
  8. dead money
  9. dead name
  10. dead named
  11. dead names

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead metaphor (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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