Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Edit Gaál: Dictionaries and methaphors: a consideration of the presentation of methaphoric usages in a selection of dictonaries

5 Dictionary definitions of metaphors After looking briefly at a few models of metaphor given by linguists, it might be interesting to see if the definitions of the word 'metaphor' given in the four selected dictionaries tie in with the linguistic theory. COD gives a rather vague and generalized definition, which seems to imply that metaphors are mostly transitional units of the language presented in the dictionary and not very important aspects of the meaning of a lexeme. It says that a metaphor is "Application of name or descriptive term or phrase to an object or action to which it is imaginatively but not literally applicable." (p 636). CIDE defines it as "An expression which describes a person or object in a literary way by referring to something that is considered to possess similar characteristics to the person or object you are trying to describe." (p 890). The meaning provided by LDCE shows a significant similarity with the definition in CIDE when it says that a metaphor is "An expression which means or describes one thing or idea using words usually used of something else with very similar qualities without using the words 'as' or 'like'."(p 654). The most obviously linguistic approach to the definition of metaphor is given in AHD when it writes that a metaphor is "A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison". In spite of the differences all four definitions succeed in grasping some essential features of metaphors, i.e.: they compare two things in an implicit way, the image created is novel and they have enormous expressive power, but fail to mention that they are common in everyday communication and are used deliberately for picturesqueness or unconventionality and they are one powerful tool of the extension of vocabulary. 6 The analysis of the words selected As I have mentioned earlier, the choice of words within each lexical field for this study was random. I did not base the selection on any previous expectation of mine of the possible number of metaphorical meanings I would come across in the selected dictionaries. I consider these words to be very common, among the first ones that a speaker of English would recall in the lexical fields of animals, body parts and flowers. After studying the given meanings in all four dictionaries, as a first general impression, I was surprised to find that all of them had metaphorical meanings listed in one or more, even if not all, dictionaries. This can be traced back to the fact that they all belong to the basic vocabulary of the language and their meanings are likely to have undergone certain 106