VividLex

Home / Thesaurus / dead metaphor

Thesaurus: dead metaphor

a metaphor that has occurred so often that it has become a new meaning of the expression (e.g., ‘he is a snake’ may once have been a metaphor but after years of use it has died and become a new sense of the word ‘snake’)

Full dictionary entry Search Lens associations

Related headwords

becomedefinitionmetaphordefinitionnewdefinitionsnakedefinitiondieddefinitionexpressiondefinitionmeaningdefinitionoccurreddefinitiononcedefinitionsensedefinitionworddefinitionyearsdefinitiondead hand of the pastfamilydead heatfamilydead languagefamilydead letterfamilydead loadfamilydead logfamilydead logsfamilydead mailfamilydead man's brakefamilydead marchfamilydead nettlefamilydead on targetfamilydead personfamilydead reckoningfamilydead ringerfamilydead roomfamily

Definitions

  1. n. a word/metaphor">metaphor that has word/occurred">occurred so often that it has become a new meaning of the expression (e.g., ‘he is a snake’ may once have been a metaphor but after years of use it has died and become a new sense of the word ‘snake’)