In a linguistic metaphor, especially when it is dead as a result of long usage, the thing named often has no other name. In a dead metaphor the comparison is completely forgotten, as for instance in the words gather, source and shady in the following example dealing with some information: / gathered that one or two of their sources were shady, and some not so much shady as irregular in a most unexpected way. (SNOW)
The meaning of such expressions as a sun beam or a beam of light are not explained by-allusions to a tree, although the word is actually derived from OE beam 'tree' || Germ Baum, whence the meaning beam a long piece of squared timber supported at both ends' has also developed. The metaphor is dead. There are no associations with hens in the verb' brood 'to meditate' (often sullenly),'though the direct meaning is 'to sit on eggs'.
There may be transitory stages: a bottleneck 'any thing obstructing an even flow of work", for instance, is not a neck and does not belong to a bottle. The transfer is possibly due to the fact that there are some common features in the narrow top part of the bottle, a narrow outlet for road traffic, and obstacles interfering with the smooth working of administrative machinery.
Metaphors, H. Paul points out, may be based upon very different types of similarity, for instance, similarity of shape: head of a cabbage, the teeth of a saw. This similarity may be based on a similarity of function. The transferred meaning is easily recognized from the context: the head of the school, the key to a mystery. The similarity may be supported also by position: foot of a page, of a mountain, or behaviour and function: bookworm, wirepuller. The word ‘whip’ a lash used to urge horses on' is metaphorically transferred to an official in the British Parliament appointed by a political party to see that members are present at debates, especially when a vote is taken, to check the voting and also to advise the members on the policy of the respective party, etc.
In the kg of the table the metaphor is motivated by the similarity of the lower part of the table and the human limb in position and partly jn shape and function. Anthropomorphic metaphors are among the most frequent. The way in which the words denoting parts of the body are made to express a variety of meanings may be illustrated by the following: head of an army, of a procession, of a household; arms and mouth of a' river, eye of a needle, foot of a hill, tongue of a bell and so on and so forth. The transferred meaning is easily recognized from the context: ... her feet were in low-heeled brown brogues with fringed tongues. (PLOMER>
Numerous cases of metaphoric transfer are based upon the analogy between duration of time and space, e.g. long distance:: long- speech; a short path :: a short time. The transfer of space relations upon psychological and mental notions may be exemplified by words and expressions concerned with understanding: to catch (to grasp) an idea; to take a hint; , to get the hang of; to throw light upon.
This metaphoric change from the concrete to the abstract is also represented in such simple words as score, span, thrill. Score comes from OE scoru 'twenty' from ON skor 'twenty' and also 'notch'. In OE time notches were cut on sticks to keep a reckoning. As score is cognate with shear, it is very probable that the meaning developed from the twentieth notch that was made of a larger size. From the meaning 'line' or 'notch cut or scratched down' many new meanings sprang out, such as 'number of points made by a player or a side in some games', 'running account', 'a debt', 'written or printed music', etc. Span from OE spann 'maximum distance between the tips of thumb and little finger used as a measure of length', came to mean 'full extent from end to end' (of a bridge, an arch, etc.) and 'a short distance'. Thrill from ME thriven 'to pierce' developed into the present meaning 'to penetrate with emotion'.
Another subgroup of metaphors comprises transitions of proper names into common ones: an Adonis, a Cicero, a Don Juan, etc. When a proper name like Falstaff is used referring specifically to the hero of Shakespeare's plays it has a unique reference. But when people speak of a person they know calling him Falstaff they make a proper name generic for a corpulent, jovial, irrepressibly impudent person and it no longer denotes a unique being. Cf. Don Juan as used about attractive profligates. To certain races and nationalities traditional characteristics have been attached by the popular mind with or without real justification. If a person is an out-and-out mercenary and a hypocrite into the bargain they call him a Philistine, ruthlessly destructive people are called Vandals.
3.Metonymy
If the transfer is based upon the association of contiguity it is called metonymy. It is a shift of names between things that are known to be in some way or other connected in reality. The transfer may be conditioned by spatial, temporal, causal, symbolic, instrumental, functional and other relations.
Thus, the word book is derived from the name of a tree on which inscriptions were scratched: ModE book < OE boc 'beech'. ModE win <. OE winnan 'to fight'; the word has been shifted so as to apply to the success following fighting. Cash is an adaptation of the French word caisse 'box'; from naming the container it came to mean what was contained, i.e. money; the original meaning was lost in competition with the new word safe. Spatial relations are also present when the name of the place is used for the people occupying it. The chair may mean 'the chairman', the bar 'the lawyers', the pulpit 'the priests'. The word town may denote the inhabitants of a town and the word house the members of the House of Commons or of Lords. Cello, violin, saxophone are often used to denote not the instruments but the musicians who play them.
A causal relationship is obvious in the following development: ModE fear < ME feere < OE fær, fēr 'danger', 'unexpected attack'. States and properties serve as names for objects and people possessing them: youth, age, authorities, forces. The name of the action can serve to name the result of the action: ModE kill < ME killen 'to hit on the head', ModE stay || Germ schlagen.. Emotions may be named by the movements that accompany them: to frown, to start.
There are also the well-known instances of symbol for thing symbolized: the crown for 'monarchy'; the instrument for the product: 'hand 'handwriting'; receptacle for content, as in the word kettle, and some others. Words for the material from which an article is made are often used to denote the particular article: glass, iron, copper, nickel are well known examples. The pars pro toto where the name of a part is applied to the whole may be illustrated by such military terms as the royal horse for 'cavalry' and foot for 'infantry', and the expressions like / want to have a word with you. The reverse process is observed when OE cēol 'a ship' develops among other variants into keel 'a barge load of coal'.
A place of its own within metonymical change is occupied by the so-called functional change. The type has its peculiarities: in this case the shift is between names of things substituting one another in human practice. Thus, the early instrument for writing was a feather or more exactly a quill (OE pen, from OFr penne, from It penna, from Lat. penna 'feather'). We write with fountain-pens that are made of different materials and have nothing in common with feathers except the function, but the name remains. The name rudder comes from OE roper 'oar' || Germ Ruder 'oar'. The shift of meaning is due to the shift of function: the steering was formerly achieved by an oar. The steersman was called pilot; with the coming of aviation one who operates the flying controls of an aircraft was also called pilot. For more cases of functional change see also the semantic history of the words: filter, pocket, spoon, stamp, sail.
Common names may be derived from proper names also metonymically, as in macadam and diesel, so named after their inventors.
Many physical and technical units are named after great scientists: volt, ohm, ampere, watt, etc.
There are also many instances in political vocabulary when the place of some establishment is used not only for the establishment itself or its staff but also for its policy: the White House, the Pentagon, Wall Street, Downing Street, Fleet Street.
Examples of geographic names turning into common nouns to name the goods exported or originating there are exceedingly numerous, e.g.
astrakhan, bikini, boston, cardigan, china, tweed.
Garments came to be known by the names of those who brought them into fashion: mackintosh, raglan, wellingtons.
4. Other types of semantic changes.
Following the lead of literary criticism linguists have often adopted terms of rhetoric for other types of semantic change, besides metaphor and metonymy. These are: hyperbole, litotes, irony, e u p h e m i s m. In all these cases the same warning that was given in connection with metaphors and metonymy must be kept in mind: namely, there is a difference between these terms as understood in literary criticism and in lexicology. Hyperbole (from Gr huperballō 'exceed') is an exaggerated statement not meant to be understood literally but expressing an intensely emotional attitude of the speaker to what he is speaking about. The emotional tone is due to the illogical character in which the direct denotative and the contextual emotional meanings are combined.
A very good example is chosen by I. R. Galperin from Byron, and one cannot help borrowing it:
When people say "I've told you fifty times," They mean to scold and very often do,
The reader will note that Byron's intonation is distinctly colloquial, the poet is giving us his observations concerning colloquial expressions, So the .hyperbole here is not poetic but linguistic.
The same may be said about expressions like: It's absolutely maddening, You'll be the death of me, I hate troubling you, It's monstrous, It's a nightmare, A thousand pardons, A thousand thanks, Haven't seen you for ages, I'd give the world to, I shall be eternally grateful, I'd love to do it, etc.
The most important difference between a poetic hyperbole and a linguistic one lies in the fact that the former creates an image, whereas in the latter the denotative meaning quickly fades out and the corresponding exaggerating words serve only as general signs of emotion without specifying the emotion itself. Some of the most frequent emphatic words are: absolutely! awfully! terribly! lovely! magnificent! splendid! and so on.
The reverse figure is called litotes (from Gr lītos 'plain', 'meagre') or understatement. It. might be defined as expressing the affirmative by the negation of its contrary: e.g. not bad or not half bad for 'good', not small for 'great', no coward for 'brave'. Some understatements do not contain negations: rather decent; I could do with a cup of tea. It is, however, doubtful whether litotes should be considered under the heading of semantic change at all, because as a rule it creates no permanent change in the semantic structure of the word concerned. The purpose of understatement is not to deceive but to produce a stronger impression on the hearer.
Also taken from rhetoric is the term irony, i.e. expression of one's meaning by words of opposite meaning, especially a simulated adoption of the opposite point of view for the purpose of ridicule. One of the meanings of the adjective nice is 'bad', 'unsatisfactory'; it is marked off as ironical and illustrated by the example: You've got us into a nice mess! The same may be said about the adjective pretty: A pretty mess you've made of it!
Changes depending on the social attitude to the object named, connected with social evaluation and emotional tone, are called amelioration and pejoration of meaning. Amelioration or elevation is a semantic shift undergone by words due to their referents coming up the social scale. For instance OE cwen 'a woman'> ModE queen, OE cniht 'a young servant' > ModE knight. The words steward and stewardess (the passengers' attendant on ships and airliners) have undergone a great amelioration. Steward < OE stigweard from stigo 'a sty' and weard 'a ward', dates back from the days when the chief wealth of the Saxon landowner was his pigs, of whom the stigweard had to take care. The meaning of some words has been elevated through associations with aristocratic life or town life. This is true about such adjectives as civil, chivalrous, urbane.
The reverse process is pejoration or degradation; it involves a lowering in social scale connected with the appearance of a derogatory and scornful emotive tone reflecting the disdain of the upper classes towards the lower ones. A knave < OE cnafa \ Germ Knabe meant at first 'boy', then 'servant', and finally became a term of abuse and scorn. Another example of the same kind is blackguard. In the lord's retinue of Middle Ages served among others the guard of iron pots and other kitchen utensils black with soot. From the immoral features attributed to these servants by their masters comes the present scornful ' meaning of the word blackguard. A similar history is traced for the words boor, churl, clown, villain.
Euphemism (Gr euphemismos from eu 'well' and pheme 'speak') is the substitution of words of mild or vague connotations for expressions rough, unpleasant or for some other reasons unmentionable.
Within the diachronic approach the phenomenon has been repeatedly classed by many linguists as taboo. This standpoint is hardly acceptable for modern European languages. With primitive peoples taboo is a prohibition meant as a safeguard against supernatural forces. Names of ritual objects or animals were taboo because the name was regarded as the equivalent of what was named. S. Ullmann returns to the conception - of taboo several times illustrating it with propitiatory names given in the early periods of language development to such objects of superstitious fear as the bear (whose name originally meant 'brown') and the weasel. He treats both examples as material of comparative semantics. The taboo influence behind the circumlocutions used to name these animals becomes quite obvious when the same phenomenon is observed in similar names in various other languages. There is no necessity to cite them here as they are given in any book on general linguistics. It should be borne in mind that taboo has historical relevance. No such opposition as that between a direct and a propitiatory name for an animal, no matter how dangerous, can be found in present-day English.
With peoples of developed culture, euphemism is intrinsically different, has nothing to do with taboo and is dictated by social usage, moral tact and etiquette. Cf. queer 'mad', deceased 'dead', perspire v 'sweat'.
From the semantical point of view euphemism is important because meanings with unpleasant connotations appear in words formerly neutral, as a result of their repeated use instead of other words that are for some reason unmentionable.
The material of this chapter shows that semantic changes are not arbitrary. They proceed in accordance with the logical and psychological laws of thought, otherwise changed words would never be understood and could not serve the purpose of communication. The various attempts at classification undertaken by traditional linguistics, although inconsistent ( and often subjective, are useful, since they permit the linguist to find his way about an immense accumulation of semantic facts. However, they say nothing or almost nothing about the causes of these changes.