The Rorschach inkblot test, used for psychological profiling and introduced in 1921, is well known, even if now little used. Few know of a similar test that was introduced in […]
Metaphor watch
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: I’m in the army now
Many metaphors are helpful; many metaphors are irritating; a few are harmful. It’s not surprising that military metaphors abound in medical writing: disease is the enemy; drugs are the weapons […]
Neville Goodman: Drawbacks and deadlines
Drawback started life as excise duty paid back when goods were exported, but few doctors now writing of drawbacks are likely to realize that. There are over 5000 drawbacks on […]
Neville Goodman: dead, revived, and mixed metaphors
Metaphors have a life and get tired, but dead metaphors are not just ones that have become very tired indeed. Dead metaphors have lost their original imagery, and have become […]
Neville Goodman: From metaphor to cliché
While on metaphor watch, certain phrases and ideas will recur. Metaphor is one of the broadest figures of speech. I use the Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD), which defines it as […]
Neville Goodman: Morale is always at rock bottom
We all know that blood pressure is a continuous variable. We measure it with a sphygmomanometer and, within the limits of measurement and its extreme range, blood pressure can be […]
Neville Goodman: Stemming the rising tide of epidemic proportions
Metaphor is useful. When Malcolm Gladwell wrote about an epidemic of Hush Puppies, no one thought that Hush Puppies were transmissible in anything more than the metaphorical sense. But as […]