Contoh Soal Understanding common metaphors

Did you notice anything strange about the two sentences above? Let’s look again, and this, time pay attention to the highlighted words:

Books overflowing with words are great food for thought! You need to digest every idea and absorb the message to have truly read a book!

Do books really overflow like a jug or bottle would? Do thoughts really eat books for lunch? How do you digest ideas in your tummy? Unless you’re a sponge, how do you absorb an idea? Is this the writing of someone who doesn’t understand the meanings of these words? The answer is no! All these words are being used here as “metaphors.”

Metaphors are a figure of speech (or a tool of language) that compare one thing with another, completely different thing, in order to highlight some quality of the thing being compared. This will become easier with some examples.

Josh’s room was a sty.

A sty is a pig’s home and is usually very dirty. Do you think Josh was actually living in a sty? Actually, what the writer is trying to say is that Josh’s room was as dirty as a sty.

Josh’s room was (as dirty as) a sty.

The sty is a “metaphor” for a dirty room. We don’t need to say “as dirty as,” because the metaphor alone does the job for us. Let’s see a few more examples.

The house was a furnace.

Time is money.

London is a melting pot.

In all these cases, we are saying A is B, whereas in life A and B are not the same at all. We are just using B to highlight some quality of A. Let’s see what the metaphors have let us leave out in each of these sentences.

The house was (as hot as) a furnace.

Time is (precious and limited and useful like) money.

London is (a place where different cultures come together and mix with each other just like things do in) a melting pot.

So now we know how metaphors work. You must have noticed a few things:

Let’s see how we can identify the meanings of metaphors that are new to us:

Words are arrows, so use them carefully.

Arrows are things that point in directions, and also weapons that are used for hunting etc. When you read the whole sentence, you realize the arrows being referred to are the pointy ones that can hurt. That’s why you must use them carefully. How are words like arrows? Are they pointy or do you need a bow to shoot words? No. But arrows can hurt, and so can words. And once you shoot an arrow, you cannot stop it midway, just like once you’ve said something, you cannot take it back. For both these reasons, words are like arrows!

And this is how, by reading the full sentence
and making logical connections, you can figure out what a new metaphor means!