The Metaphosaurus

I have had a personal love affair with thesauruses — yes, its an acceptable plural form of that word besides “thesauri,” which sounds weirder. It all started when my godfather gave me a scrabble set. Along with the set, he gave me a thesaurus. With the weird, dinosaur-sounding name, my curiosity got the better of me, so I took the hardbound book and read it. The cover said, “The perfect word for every occasion.” When I read the contents, it didn’t look like a real dictionary. It only contained synonyms and antonyms! “What a weird kind of dictionary,” I thought to myself. Thanks to it, though, my vocabulary expanded, and true enough, I was able to find the right words for the right occasions. As I grew up, I learned to write — not just note down ideas but really write — and I craved for something similar to a thesaurus. I wanted to have a list of metaphors so that I could get inspiration from reading it. I know that it’s a long leap from thesauruses, but I wonder — could I start a new trend of posts in WordPress? Could I start a Metaphosaurus?

Time will only tell, but first things first.

What is a metaphor? Basically, metaphors are comparisons, but instead of saying that one thing is like the other, they are equated. For example, I can say that love is a key that opens the door to heaven. I equated love to a key. Simple enough, right? Actually, there’s more to it; metaphors have parts, too. It is usually composed of a tenor or the original topic. In my example, it was “love.” A metaphor also has a vehicle, and no, it’s not something that guzzles gas and zooms along the highway. The vehicle is the other object that we equate to the tenor, which is “key” in the example I gave earlier. Overtly, the tenor and the vehicle are connected by a connecting verb, which are usually those that equates them. Usually, these verbs are members of the “be” family like “is” and “are.” On the other hand, the connections that we cannot see or hear are by far more interesting. These connections are called the dimensions of the metaphor. Simply put, they’re the similarities that exist between the two concepts that we are linking. Going back to the example, both “love” and “key” both let people into a place, which in this case is “heaven.” The interplay of these parts and the realization of the dimensions of each metaphor makes it sound better than plain speech.

Taking the idea of a metaphor in mind, here’s the idea: I’d like to start a trend of writing down metaphors for easy access. Let’s all write metaphors no matter how complicated or simple they are. To compile and create an online database, let’s use the tagging system of WordPress, which we all know would cross-reference and gather all the posts tagged with it on a single page. Let’s use the tag “metaphosaurus” for posts that play a part in this project. Like most reference books, let’s use a simple format. Each post entry should use the tenor as the title of the post, and of course, the whole metaphor in the body; embellishments — photos, videos, music, and the like — are optional but welcomed. Easy enough, right?

If this Metaphosaurus project picks up, I think that we’ll all be amazed at how creative people are. It’s just that we haven’t had time to share and view all the wonderful metaphors that we get to use in daily life. It’s also a good blog post prompt if you don’t have anything specific in mind to post. Considering that it’s an effort that writers from around the world can participate in, perhaps, we can create another weird, dinosaur-sounding reference material. This time, it’ll run under the tag line that says, “The perfect metaphor for every occasion.”

The Metaphosaurus Project is something that I started back in 2011. Now that I’m able to steal time for my own writing, I’m restarting it in this blog.