Mixed Metaphors by Karen Sullivan

Author:Karen Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

6 MALAPHORS AND OTHER ‘DUCKS OUT OF WATER’

Many mixed metaphors are actually combinations of metaphoric idioms.1 For instance, every single mixed metaphor in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grammar and Style involves idioms, as in That wet blanket is a loose cannon and A rolling stone gathers no bird in the hand. Expressions such as wet blanket, loose cannon, rolling stone, and bird in the hand are considered idioms because they are fixed expressions with meanings that we have to learn separately, even if we know all the words they include. Someone who knows the meanings of wet and blanket, for example, still has to learn that wet blanket refers to a person who’s no fun, rather than a blanket that’s literally wet. Many idioms, including wet blanket, have meanings that involve conceptual metaphors, which makes them specifically metaphoric idioms.2

Why do writing guides such as The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grammar and Style choose metaphoric idioms to illustrate the concept of mixed metaphor? Metaphors can be mixed in a variety of ways without the need for idioms, as we’ve seen throughout this book. Nonetheless, metaphoric idioms seem particularly easy to mix because their metaphoric meanings aren’t apparent unless we know the idioms’ historical origins. For example, wet blankets were traditionally used to put out fires. Because PASSION is metaphorically HEAT, a metaphoric ‘wet blanket’ is someone who stifles the enthusiasm (‘puts out the fire’) of others. Only this historical link to firefighting connects wet blanket ‘person who spoils others’ fun’ to the metaphor PASSION IS HEAT. For speakers who lack this historical knowledge, wet blanket is a dead metaphor, and the idiom directly means ‘person who spoils others’ fun’ without any metaphoric connection.

Similarly, a loose cannon on a ship would roll around and risk damaging its own vessel, which is why a human ‘loose cannon’ is considered to metaphorically shoot off an unpredictable barrage of rhetoric via ARGUMENT IS PHYSICAL COMBAT. However, for speakers who don’t think of a ship when they use the idiom loose cannon, the idiom is a dead metaphor that simply means ‘unpredictably destructive person’.

A speaker who is aware of the metaphoric meaning of wet blanket will probably take care to combine this phrase with compatible metaphoric language, as in He was a wet blanket who extinguished any spark of humour. On the other hand, a speaker who doesn’t know that a wet blanket is a fire-fighting tool is unlikely to select compatible metaphors. This kind of speaker might produce an idiom combination such as He was a wet blanket and a loose cannon with the intended meaning ‘he was unpredictably destructive and no fun’. Of course, nothing can simultaneously be a blanket and a cannon. Even someone who is unfamiliar with the metaphoric origins of the idioms may recognize that a blanket and a cannon are two different things and therefore may consider the metaphor mixed.

Although that wet blanket is a loose cannon was presumably invented by the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grammar and Style, equally bizarre idiom combinations are produced in real life.

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