I Can Understand Metaphors And Use Them

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I looked at the ad. It looks like the advertisers are deliberately toggling back and forth between metaphor and reality in order to convey the message that "rewards are real" (the tagline that ends the ad). They want your brain to switch back and forth between a metaphorical understanding and a literal one. This is why they announce that the volcano is a metaphor. So when the man dips his hand in metaphorical gold, he screams in happiness at first. But then the metaphor becomes a reality and he screams in pain as his hand is burned by molten gold.

The intended message is that your rewards for banking with them will be real. You may join the bank thinking of the rewards as just a metaphor (as the volcano starts as just a metaphor) but you will eventually discover that the rewards are real (as the volcano becomes real).

I love metaphors, I can understand and use them (and create them) but I can get really confused by the ones that are idioms.

I've made up metaphors too at times.

Idioms... As long as I know what they mean, I can use them. Some are obvious, some I've needed to have explained to me. Hehe. when I hear idioms I know what they mean, but in my mind I still 'see' the literal meaning! Sometimes that image can be so funny I can't help but laugh. No one else sees the humor though! lol

Related - I have never understood why Americans (I think) say 'I could care less' when English say 'I couldn't care less'.

It is used in a situation when you are trying to explain that you don't care about something so saying 'I could care less' is the completely wrong thing to say, in fact it gives the opposite impression that you really care about it.

I thought idioms and metaphors were the same.

Me too! I always see the literal/concrete meaning in words -- it's the first step in making them mean anythng at all, and my brain can't skip over it even if I've heard (or read) the words a million times.


They kind of are; An idiom is a specific type of metaphor, but there are other kinds of metaphor, too.

Idioms are the short but widely-known sayings people use in everyday speech and writing, like:

"Don't rock the boat"
"Pot calling the kettle black"
"The grass is always greener on the other side"

But there are non-idiom metaphors in books (those are hard for me to figure out, usually -- I actually couldn't believe that they existed until I was almost an adult)

Also people are using non-idiom metaphors when they say things like, "My mind is a computer" and then go on to describe how their mind works based on imagining it as a computer.

That one drives me crazy as they are saying the opposite than what they mean.

I don't understand why it's "I couldn't care less."


I cannot care less I think they are saying so that means they can't care less about it. Saying they could care less sounds better but I guess that is my literal mind speaking. They can care less so they do care less. If they didn't care less they do care more about it.

What's a Meta for?

//wut

Yes. And this is how two completely opposite sentences came to mean the same thing. One has an implied further action and the other one doesn't.

I couldn't care less------I have achieved the minimal amount of caring that is possible and no further reduction in caring is possible.

I could care less--------A reduction in caring is still possible and I will achieve that reduction by the time this sentence is out of my mouth (implied). As League Girl said, They can care less so they do care less.

It's two technically opposite ways of reaching the same goal by playing around with the temporal use of could.

I wonder if it has something to do with people hearing the sounds wrong, and then the whole saying gets passed from person to person in an altered way? Kind of like how spelling changes with time (and across locations) as more and more people adopt altered spellings of the original.

That's how a lot of words in language change with time, I think -- sounds, letters, or whole words get added or dropped and then the altered word/saying is understood accurately by other people despite the alteration (in spellings or even whole words) and passed along until people are using the altered version all over the place.

i do not consider it as "down to earth". i think it is quite inferential. and i did not know that peasants were less able to understand sentences than anyone else.



i have always interpreted "strike while the iron is hot" in a different way (not with respect to it's underlying meaning, but with respect to it's concept).
when i was young, we had a farm with cattle on it, and we had to brand the yearlings to prevent them from being stolen. my father tried to teach me how to brand the cattle, and he used to heat up the branding iron in coals, and when it was red hot, he used to take it out and stamp it onto the cattle's rump.
when i tried to do it, i hesitated and my father said "come on hurry up or it'll be too late," , and when i finally stamped the brand onto the cow, it smouldered and hurt the cow, but it did not leave a permanent impression, so a few months later it had to be done again.




the one i had in my hand because i would not have to spend extra energy to catch one of the others.




what if the plane being shot at was destroyed before the whole nine yards were spent? it would be wasteful to continue shooting after the other plane was dispatched. what if after expending the whole nine yards, the other plane was still undamaged? i can not see how it makes sense.

well if they claim the "rewards" are real, then why refer to metaphors in the first place.

but it was tangible and concrete. it was there. it was not an allegory. it was on the ground and clearly bubbling that gold paint. how can someone come over, and without a word being said, somehow concoct a vision in their head that corresponds to the lawn keepers vision of something that they both look in the same physical direction at?

i could not tell whether he was in pain or whether he was psychotically euphoric. i thought if he was in pain, he would have began jumping about flapping his hand wildly.


oh well. it was a message i did not get.

I always found that weird. Having an ASD does not mean you're incapable of learning. Once a metaphor or figure of speech has been explained to you, unless you're learning disabled to the point of being incapable of retaining information, surely you know the meaning next time? Sure, visual thinkers may still get a funny mental image when hearing a figure of speech but you know what it means now.

I do wonder if autistic people, having fewer social interactions just tend to know fewer figures of speech, and that's where this cliche comes from? After all, figures of speech are probably less likely to be used in writing, what with being figures of speech (not writing).

To me he looks psychotically happy.

And I guess that is why people say "I could care less." I guess they don't understand either why it's couldn't care less.

Exactly. I think it's weird too. We learn that as easily as new words or new facts.


I've definitely come across most of my figures of speech in writing. Isn't 'figure of speech' itself sort of a figure of speech?