DEAD METAPHOR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

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')

Synonyms:

dead metaphor; frozen metaphor

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("dead metaphor" is a kind of...):

metaphor (a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity)

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