The words covered in this article are tangible and intangible, figurative, evoke and evocative, humdrum, monotonous and monotony. Previously done words that will reoccur today are metaphor, analogy, explicit and vivid.
You learnt yesterday that a metaphor is an analogy that says, ‘this ABSTRACT thing is like that thing,’
Perhaps you’ve already noticed this, but I’ll still state this explicitly: metaphor is a type of analogy; in other words, all metaphors are analogies, but all analogies are not metaphors. Those analogies that express similarity of an abstract thing with another thing get called metaphors.
To drive this point home, let us consider a statement that I made yesterday:
‘A globe is an analog of the earth.’
Can we say that ‘a globe is a metaphor of the earth’?
The answer is ‘no,’ because the two things that are said to be alike (analogous) here – a globe and the earth – are both tangible things.
Tangible
Tangible means that which can be touched, that which has a physical reality. This word is an adjective.
The opposite of tangible is intangible, meaning that which cannot be touched, that which does not have a material form. Intangible is a synonym of abstract.
‘Truth’ and ‘beauty’ are intangible qualities. Ghosts are intangible too – you can touch a living person but not a ghost.
For an analogy to be called a metaphor, at least one of the things that are said to be alike needs to be intangible. ‘He was a lion in the battlefield’ is an example of a metaphor because the two things that are said to be alike here are both abstract: the conduct of this man in the battlefield, and the conduct of a lion in a jungle.
Some other examples of metaphors are:
- She was his rock.
- If one took this sentence literally, they might wonder, “Why did she turn into a rock? And how did he come to own that rock?” Outside of fairy tales, we know not to take this sentence literally.
- Why is this a metaphor? This sentence compares the support that a woman gave to a man with the support that a rock will give to you if you lean against it. The support that a person gives to another is an abstract thing. Therefore, we call this analogy a metaphor.
- All the world’s a stage.
- Can you explain why this is a metaphor?
- Old age is the evening of life
- Can you explain why this is a metaphor?
You may remember having studied similes in school. Similes are expressions in which two essentially different things are compared using words such as like or as. For example: as white as snow, as clever as a fox.
Three poetic examples of similes:
- My love is like a red, red rose. (Robert Burns)
- So are you to my thoughts as food to life (Shakespeare)
- Learning is to the mind as light is to the eye. (Samuel Johnson, also discussed yesterday)
The word simile comes from the Latin simili, meaning ‘image, likeness.’ The word ‘similar’ too comes from the same root.
Like metaphor, simile too is a type of analogy. Metaphors and similes both express similarity between two things based on an abstract property; the difference is that the similes make the comparison (of two unlike things) explicit by using words such as ‘like’ or ‘as’, while metaphors do not use such clear markers.
So, ‘she was like a red rose’ is a simile while ‘she was a red rose’ is a metaphor.
Figurative
The word figurative means not literal, metaphorical.
So, figurative and metaphorical are synonyms, and they are both opposites of the word ‘literal.’
When we say that someone’s heart is golden, we are speaking figuratively, not literally. If, upon hearing this said about Mr. X, a greedy fool kills Mr. X and cuts open his corpse, eager to extract the golden heart upon selling which he will become a rich man, he will be sorely disappointed (and will probably spend the rest of his life in a jail or a mental asylum).
Galileo once wrote (in a letter to his disciple, monk Benedetto Castelli) that though everything that the Bible said was true, sometimes this truth was expressed poetically – figuratively – and not literally. When one comes across a phrase such as “the hand of God” in the Bible, it would be a mistake to interpret this literally, because if God has an actual, physical hand, like us humans, then God must have a tangible body too, an inference that would contradict/falsify the parts where the Bible says that God is a spirit and does not have a body. The only way to prevent self-contradiction within the scripture is to understand a phrase such as “the hand of God” as a metaphor.
Below is an excerpt from Galileo’s letter:
“Though the Scripture cannot err, nevertheless some of its interpreters . . . can sometimes err in various ways. One of these would be very serious and very frequent, namely to want to limit oneself always to the literal meaning of the words; for there would thus emerge not only various contradictions . . . and it would be necessary to attribute to God feet, hands and eyes, as well as bodily and human feelings like anger, regret, hate and sometimes even forgetfulness of things past and ignorance of future ones. Thus, in the Scripture one finds many propositions which look different from the truth if one goes by the literal meaning of the words, but which are expressed in this manner to accommodate the incapacity of common people . . . it is necessary that wise interpreters produce their true meaning and indicate the particular reasons why they have been expressed by means of such words.
Thus, given that in many places the Scripture is not only capable but necessarily in need of interpretations different from the apparent meaning of the words, it seems to me that in disputes about natural phenomena it should be reserved to the last place.”
Letter to Benedetto Castelli, by Galileo Galilei
Why was this point important for Galileo to clarify? Because the principal opposition of the Church to his scientific work about the earth’s movement around the sun was that it contradicted a literal reading of some Biblical verses, such as the one below (Psalm 104:5 — The New International Version):
“He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.”
Yesterday, while discussing the greater power of metaphor as compared to literal expression, I wrote:
“The advantage of describing this person as ‘a lion in the battlefield’ instead of merely as ‘brave’ is that the metaphorical expression is much more vivid. It brings to our mind a bright, movie-like image of how the man fought – we see him roaring in the battlefield and lording over the weaker-hearted opponents as they retreat fearfully to save their lives.”
In this excerpt, instead of ‘brings to our mind a bright, movie-like image’, I could also have written, ‘evokes a bright, movie-like image.’
Evoke
The verb evoke means call (some image, emotion or memory etc.) to mind.
The adjective form of the word is evocative and is used for a thing that calls (an image, emotion or memory etc.) to mind.
Etymology: Latin e-, out + vocare, to call. The words ‘voice’ and ‘vocal’ too are from the same root.
Long after a loved one is gone, random things— a song they sometimes hummed, a phrase they often used, a color they liked — continue to evoke their presence. These things bring back the person to the centerstage of our mind, for a few moments or all day.
Here are more usage examples from the best-selling book A Mind for Numbers by Professor Barbara Oakley. Suggesting that students should make mnemonics a part of their learning strategy for math and science, she says:
“To begin tapping into your visual memory system, try making a very memorable visual image representing one key item you want to remember . . . Part of the reason an image is so important to memory is that images connect directly to your right brain’s visuospatial centers. The image helps you encapsulate a seemingly humdrum and hard-to-remember concept by tapping into visual areas with enhanced memory abilities. The more neural hooks you can build by evoking the senses, the easier it will be for you to recall the concept and what it means. . .The funnier and more evocative the images, the better. . .
Learning to process ideas visually in math and science is a powerful way to become a master of the material. . . Where at first it may take fifteen minutes to build an evocative image for an equation and embed it in, say, the kitchen sink of your memory palace, it can later take only minutes or seconds to perform a similar task.”
Professor Barbara Oakley in A Mind for Numbers
Humdrum
Humdrum means dull, boring, lacking variety, excitement or surprise.
Try saying ‘hum’ for some time (elongate the ‘m’). Note how the sound you make is a flat line, with no variations. It is a sound that can put people to sleep! The word humdrum originated around 1545-55 from the boring sound of ‘hum.’ Today, it is used for anything that lacks variety.
Another word that is synonymous with humdrum is monotonous.
Monotonous
Monotonous is an adjective that means continuing in the same tone, without any variation; boring, routine. The noun form of the word is monotony.
| Noun form | Monotony | = boredom |
| Adjective form | Monotonous | = boring |
Origin: Greek mono, one + tonos, tone
The sound that the word ‘hum’ makes is a monotonous sound.
Let us close today’s lesson with a piece of advice from Norman Lewis, the Grand Old Man of vocab learning:
“When a pregnant woman takes calcium pills, she must make sure also that her diet is rich in vitamin D, since this vitamin makes the absorption of the calcium possible. In building your vocabulary by learning great quantities of new words, you too must take a certain vitamin, metaphorically speaking, to help you absorb, understand, and remember these words. This vitamin is reading- for jt is in books and magazines that you will find the words [that you have been learning] . . . To learn new words without seeing them applied in the context of your reading is to do only half the job and to run the risk of gradually forgetting the additions to your vocabulary.”
Word Power Made Easy, Page 335
The analogy that Lewis describes is:
(Vitamin D) : (Calcium) : : (Reading) : (new words)
Just as Vitamin D is necessary for the absorption of calcium, reading is necessary for the absorption of new words.
Tomorrow, you will read about a medieval king who ordered ruthless punishments for anybody who worshipped icons of Jesus. But before you go, here are a few more usage examples of the words you learnt today.
- The tennis player was famous for her disciplined training regimen. When a journalist asked her if following the same, hard routine everyday did not become monotonous, she smiled and said: “The daily satisfaction of reaching a bit closer to the top makes it thrilling.”
- Riya had been very excited about travelling by a ship. But soon, the monotonous silence of the sea began to bore her.
- “My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
- Did the ancient hunter-gatherers consider walnuts a delicacy or a humdrum staple? It is hard to answer.
- Note the contrast: a delicacy is something special, an eatable consumed on rare occasions. A humdrum staple is what you eat everyday – nothing special about it.
- The first texts of history contain no philosophical insights, no poetry, legends, laws, or even royal triumphs. They are humdrum economic documents, recording the payment of taxes, the accumulation of debts and the ownership of property.
- These first texts are not about special high points of human achievement but about boring everyday matters.