Dictionary

supermetaphor en · NOUN

Pronunciation

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Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *úp Proto-Indo-European *-er Proto-Indo-European *upér Proto-Italic *super Latin super Latin super-lbor. English super- English metaphor English supermetaphor From super- + metaphor.

Meanings

1. A grounding fact; a correspondance between the underlying truth and our ideas and constructions based on that truth.
   • In a way, what Fechner tried to do through his inner psychophysics of intensity was to subvert a set of tenacious metaphors—a kind of "Supermetaphor," governing psychophysiological thinking, that has channeled the thinking of so very many scientists before and after him. Broadly speaking, the Supermetaphor seeks equivalences in kind between physical and mental processes, as it postulates a strict quantitative as well as qualitative invariance between the structure of mental acts and the underlying physiological activities...... The Supermetaphor is implicit in attempts by modern scientists to find neural responses that match, quanitatively, some measure of sensation magnitutdes. And it is implicit in Freud. 2013, Hans-Georg Geissler, Stephen W. Link, James T. Townsend, Cognition, Information Processing, and Psychophysics: Basic Issues, →ISBN:
   • Each legal order stands on a grounding fact, a superfact or a supermetaphor, as I would call it, which determines the specific interpretive standpoint or perspective that characterizes the adopted type of projection. 2002, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Toward a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization, and Emancipation, →ISBN:
   • In this way he promotes landscape into a supermetaphor, in order to expose a general tendency towards equalization. 1997, Archis - Issues 9-12, page 27:
2. An overarching metaphor; a metaphor that encompasses several sub-metaphors.
   • We can combine all five metaphors into a single integrated supermetaphor. The theatre can be visualized as including useful aspects of the threshold, searchlight, iceberg, novelty, and executive notions. As such a supermetaphor becomes enriched, it can gradually take on the features of a genuine theory. 2003, Max Velmans, The Science of Consciousness, →ISBN, page 81:
   • This is a case of supermetaphor called metalepsis by Quintilian and transumptio by Geoffrey of Vinsauf. The images echo one another. 1998, Aldo D. Scaglione, Paolo Cherchi, Essays on the Arts of Discourse: Linguistics, Rhetoric, Poetics, →ISBN:
   • The third chapter focuses on the theme of alcohol, which is a sort of "supermetaphor" of poetic distillation, encompassing all the other metaphors. 1996, Masters Abstracts - Volume 34, Issues 3-4, page 1375:
   • ...one supermetaphor. Perhaps we could steal a phrase from Merleau-Ponty and suggest that there are no principal and subordinate metaphors: all metaphors are concentric, like the concentricity of flesh, a metaphor for which there are no names in traditional philosophy. 1998, Shaun Gallagher, The Inordinance of Time, →ISBN, page 107:
   • Combining the stability of architecture, the fluidity of water, and the vitality of plant life, the root is a kind of supermetaphor that subsumes the others. 2016, Christy Wampole, Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor, →ISBN, page 17:
3. A metaphor that is particularly widespread or dominant.
   • BCCI suddenly bloomed as a sort of supermetaphor for the INTRODUCTION: THE DEVIL'S PAYMASTER. 2004, Jonathan Beaty, S. C. Gwynne, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of BCCI, →ISBN, page xxiii:
   • "Mother" as supermetaphor for "man's projection of the ideal" is dealt a final blow by McBride's organized exposition of the alternative: female parents and male parents — "because no one sex and no one person should be responsible for... 1973, The New York Times Book Review - Volume 78, page 52:
   • Gerhart von Graevenitz (1994) also problematizes the current supermetaphor status of the term arabesque; before the “globalization of its catchment area,” he notes, the arabesque was a poetic paradigm of the Romantic period in literature. 2016, Dawn Keetley, Angela Tenga, Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film, →ISBN:
4. A metaphor about metaphors.
   • Driven by the demands of undergraduate teaching, Morgan wanted to translate Sociological Paradigms into a work that would appeal not only to academics and students of organization but also to practitioners. In pursuit of this aim, he alighted upon what we might characterize as a super-metaphor: the idea that “all theories are metaphorical.” 2016, Anders Örtenblad, Kiran Trehan, Linda L. Putnam, Exploring Morgan’s Metaphors, →ISBN:

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