Word.ws English Dictionary

dead metaphors

dead metaphors is the plural of dead metaphor.

Meaning of dead metaphor

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

Questions about dead metaphors

What is dead metaphors the plural of?
Dead metaphors is the plural of dead metaphor.

Words near dead metaphors in the dictionary

  1. dead men walking
  2. dead men's bells
  3. dead men's fingers
  4. dead men's shoes
  5. dead metaphor
  6. dead metaphors
  7. dead money
  8. dead name
  9. dead named
  10. dead names
  11. dead naming

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead metaphors (page history and authors); 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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