GR translation: with edges fine and combed as rain

David Morris fqmorris at gmail.com
Sat Mar 16 17:18:13 CDT 2013


If you contend that juxting opposites in a simile is rare, I'd like to
start a blog about such.  I contend that it is rampant.

On Saturday, March 16, 2013, alice wellintown wrote:

> A simile, such as the one you've provided, is a type of metaphor, in
> this case the simile is constructed with "as", though it can be made
> with "like' as well, and without either.
>
> Though most students are taught that a simile always uses one or the
> other, this is false.
>
> The comparison is all that is needed.
>
> A non-simile metaphor or a metaphor that is not a similie will not
> make the comparison but the claim, so if we take your example and
> apply it to me,  thus, "Alice is a box of rocks", we see that it is
> not  a matter of obscurity but of effect.
>
> The former, yours, is surely more obscure, for it compares two
> un-alike things as it wedges "as" or "like" betwixt them.
>
> And, as "as" and "like" are given grammar's conscriptive usage, and
> this obscures both from the vulgar tongue we are used to using, this
> compounds, not obscures the matter.
>
> The matter, as Hamlet tells Polonius, is words, words, words.
>
> Nothing, as far as we know, is more prone to abscure turdity
> scatalogically,  than words.
>
>
>
> > Dumb as a box of rocks.
> >
> > Metaphor.
> >
> > Why make this obscure?
>
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