metaphor

The New Zealand landscape does echo the rolling hills of Central California, in a dry season, but it’s a dreary vision, hardly the paradise of Steinbeck’s memory, book or metaphor.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026

The royals are depicted as the type of children who come round, break your toys and then disappear, in what might be an extended metaphor for how he saw Diana's story.

From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026

Perhaps if Short weren’t associated with a detective noir masterpiece, she would never have become a useful metaphor for the corruption and rot associated with Hollywood and Los Angeles, or an eternal enigma.

From Salon ● Sep. 18, 2026

One Book Club member described the prime minister’s geopolitics using a dating metaphor: “Canadians should realize there are more fish in the sea than the United States.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026

“I’m a big believer in metaphor, Hazel Grace.”

From "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green

When the themes get more abstract—“Synesthesia,” “The Mythology of Fear”—we’re looking at metaphors for the human condition.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026

CEOs sometimes use sports metaphors but stars can dominate those teams.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026

And I wasn’t entirely thrilled with “Backrooms” getting lost in the maze of its metaphors, either.

From Salon ● Aug. 24, 2026

Their tattered remnants, barely held together with patches and stitching, are poignant metaphors for a battered will that keeps fighting even as protections wear thin.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026

Roughly: the more “rhetorical” it sounds—the more stuffed with extended metaphors, elaborate verbal patterning, and five-dollar words—the higher the style.

From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith