Driving metaphors are common in everyday speech: foot on the gas, back seat driver, eyes on the road, apply the brake, change gear. Only driving seat appears with any frequency […]
Metaphor watch
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: Open things up
I haven’t yet mentioned one of the most well known metaphors in medicine: that of the lock and key for molecular interactions. Whether it was suggested previously for straightforward chemical […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: Uncommon words
There are some words that I keep having to look up. They are not common words, and in the intervals before seeing them again I forget what they mean. It […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: A slip-up
It was inevitable, in the recent cluster of articles about assisted dying, that the slippery slope would be mentioned. I referred to it when discussing Pandora’s Box (q.v.), and quoted […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: Let’s talk about the weather
Meteorological metaphors are common in everyday speech: he was lightning fast; you are my sunshine; it’s clear skies from now on. That doesn’t make them common in medical writing, and […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: The whole spectrum
Spectrum originally meant the same as spectre: a ghost. It was appropriated by Newton in 1671 to describe how sunlight passing through a prism “exhibited… a Spectrum of divers colours” […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: The play’s the thing
In the column about icebergs (qv), I mentioned repertoire used instead of number: “expanding repertoire of targets for immune inhibition in bladder cancer”. Repertoire and repertory are two similar words […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: Tsunami
Metaphor Watch kicked off (a metaphor for started) with epidemic, used ubiquitously and inappropriately for the non-communicable diseases of industrialized nations. I rounded off (a metaphor for finished) with a […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: Tectonic shifts
When I equated the quantum leap to the big bang, I overlooked another term borrowed from another science: tectonic shift. The adjective tectonic is older than modern geology; it comes […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: Arctic waters
An iceberg is a useful metaphor. It appears most commonly as the tip of the iceberg, and it is a warning. Nine-tenths of an iceberg is under water, usually extending well […]