PlaneShift
Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: bilbous on November 08, 2006, 03:40:57 pm
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Well as I threatened in another thread, here is the obscure metaphor thread! Two I have come up with so far:
Throwing darts at trial ballons to save the sky from hot air.
This means that when someone suggests something unpalatable to see if they can get away with it (trial ballon) it must be challenged (throw darts) to ameliorate potention damage it could cause (save the sky.)
Ships hitting the foam a cleaned up version of "____ hitting the fan" indicating an unpleasant series of results stemming from a particular action.
Can we come up with some more?
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One fry short of a happy meal.
The lights are on but no one is home.
The elevator dosent go all the way to the top floor.
......
All metaphors for lack of intelligence
ok ok they arent that obscure because they are well known, but at one time I bet they were a little obscure.
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S/he is so dence light bends around him. ;D
My favorite for lack of intelligence!
I don't know any obscure ones though.
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I love that one Parallo \\o//
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Are we coming up with them?
Hm...
"That's no moon, that's a space station! ...no, wait, it's just [name]."
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Well I came up with the ones I posted. The idea wasn't really about insults though.
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Here's some Stonebreaker ones:
'Don't break a chisel on it' - It's not worth the bother.
'Keep your axes sharp till you need them' - Don't rush into things
'She's got her fingers in his beard' - She is after him as a husband!
Hmmm?
Arka :D
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I find that last one... disturbing to say the least, Arka.
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Hmm well maybe along those lines a kran might say "rocks in his head" about a strong thinker or particularly wise person. My original two were not game related, this is the Plaza after all, but any action is better than no action I guess.
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I find that last one... disturbing to say the least, Arka.
Lol I agree
Nowadays people would do this if they heard that line, :o :o
lol ;D
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Here's some Stonebreaker ones:
'She's got her fingers in his beard' - She is after him as a husband!
Hmmm?
Arka :D
that one was my favorite.... :flowers:
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Hmm well maybe along those lines a kran might say "rocks in his head" about a strong thinker or particularly wise person.
This is very true, WiseKran has many rocks in his head, Big rocks, full of Knowledge.
WiseKran might say the following about less intelligent empty headed Krans:
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
The lights are on, but no one is Home.
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not a metaphor but a simile:
He has a head like a Geode, crystallized and empty.
His temperament is like clay, soft and gooey, but solid under fire.
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light travels faster than sound, thats why some people appear bright until you hear them speak... was on someone signature somewhere
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The early bird always gets the worm. (The early Ulber always gets the groffel)<-- If you do things right away, you will get results, but if you procrastinate, you won't get good results.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. <-- It is easy to envy others just by looking, but once you understand their situation, it is usualy not that much better.
Insults anyone
He has the I.Q. of a cucumber.
He is so low, he would have to climb up to be in the sewer.
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A closed mouth catches no flies.
S/he does not have the brain power to toast a crouton
People can't say that you have absolutely nothing! After all, you have inferiority!
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I am actually kind of disappointed with this thread. It was not meant to be a list of putdowns. It is not too surprising, however. Lets see if we can get back on track; here is the definition of metaphor:
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]
metaphor
The transference of the relation between one set of objects
to another set for the purpose of brief explanation; a
compressed simile; e. g., the ship plows the sea. --Abbott &
Seeley. "All the world's a stage." --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
Note: The statement, "that man is a fox," is a metaphor; but
"that man is like a fox," is a simile, similitude, or
comparison.
[1913 Webster] Metaphoric
WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]
metaphor
n : 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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My band director is an expert at making obscure and random anologies, but unfortunately most of them refer to musical situations.
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I just want to make it clear I have my fingers in no-one's beard
Arka :P
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One of my favourite unfortunately only works in german, probably:
"Der glaubt auch, dass Zitronenfalter Zitronen falten."
It's based on the name of butterflies / moths due to the fact that they look like being folded: "Falter" = moth, "falten" = to fold. So a stumbling translation would be:
"He even believes that 'Lemon moths (folders)' fold lemons." ('Lemon moth' = brimstone butterfly, because they are lemon yellow.)
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One bird in the hand, is worth two in the bush.
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Similar to the german metaphor "one is shooting a cannon at sparrows" (in english might be "breaking a fly on the wheel") ... well, Peacer created an own variant, shooting meteors at rats. ;)
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My daughter recently came up with "happy as a duck in a polka-dot dress". Hey, she's six. I don't know the background. X-/
A friend of mine's favorite saying is:
"I'm all over that like a fat kid on a Smartie".
(Smarties are candy-covered chocolates here in Canada).
Makes me giggle every time (I always get a mental image). ;D
Means "very enthusiastic".
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Not only in Canada do you know Smarties. ;) - The concurrent product here is M&Ms.
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:offtopic: USA has a different take on it: http://www.fenwickgifts.com/candy/smarties.jpg
Here it'd be, "I'm all over that like a fat kid on a M&M, unless that fat kid liked pure sugar in tablet form, becuase then it'd be a Smartie"
:innocent:
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here down under Smarties are LIKE M&M's, i think they are probably the same as what they have in Canada.
(http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/pix/smarties_jefras051216.jpg)
Thats what we have here.pretty much sugar coated chocolate.
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Not only in Canada do you know Smarties. ;) - The concurrent product here is M&Ms.
no, no, no!
M&M's are TOTALLY different than Smarties! (they sell both in Canada)
While it's true, they both share the chocolate with candy coating, the proportions of candy to chocolate are quite different in the two products. These subtleties are important to those of us who are passionate about our confectionary!
Besides, M&Ms confuse me. The packages I get are always duds -- only 25% are M's -- the rest are W's, E's and 3's
;)
:offtopic: USA has a different take on it: http://www.fenwickgifts.com/candy/smarties.jpg
ah.
That, my friend, is what we call "Rockets".
here down under Smarties are LIKE M&M's, i think they are probably the same as what they have in Canada.
(http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/pix/smarties_jefras051216.jpg)
Thats what we have here.pretty much sugar coated chocolate.
yup, that's it! Very different than M&M's, as people can plainly see. ;)
Anyways, back on topic --
This topic reminds me of one of my favorite Star Trek: Next Generation episodes, where Picard encounters a race whose language is composed ENTIRELY of metaphors. Lacking context for the metaphors, understanding the language becomes very difficult.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok
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OH, by the way i have one, "Im sweating like a paedophile at a Wiggle's concert" - meaning, obviously, I'm sweating a lot ;P. ok, so its not so obscure, but it is rather twisted.
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Similar to the german metaphor "one is shooting a cannon at sparrows" (in english might be "breaking a fly on the wheel") ... well, Peacer created an own variant, shooting meteors at rats. ;)
ROFL nice one xD, although if you look at the materials in game, a meteor is only 2.5 the size of a rat ::)
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I googled one metaphor I remembered being funny, just to get it right. Found it, and these others:
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up .
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
Evidently, some or all of these are quotes from High School essays.
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My all time literary favourite:
Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker trilogy)
"It [space ship] was deadly. Not deadly like a flying bullet, but deadly like a brick wall across a motorway." (paraphrase)
Arka
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"That hammerweilder must have been leeching my minerals when he told me about the goose that lays golden eggs." meaning pulling my leg.
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to quote beans..... Shoot for the moon, if you miss your still amongst those stars