What's a metaphor?

It's for communicating complex ideas.

"Metaphors aren't just used for flowery speech," says Lera Boroditsky, assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University. 'They shape the conversation for things we're trying to explain and figure out. And they have consequences for determining what we decide is the right approach to solving problems."

"Some estimates suggest that one out of every 25 words we encounter is a metaphor," adds Paul Thibodeau, a doctoral candidate. "But we didn't know the extent to which these metaphors influence people."

The two conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to react to fictional reports on crime in a city. The result: people will likely support an increase in police forces and jailing of offenders if crime is described as a "beast" preying on a community. But if people are told crime is a "virus" infecting a city, they are more inclined to treat the problem with social reform.

Along with the metaphors, the crime reports also included some alarming statistics. One mentioned that there were about 10,000 more crimes reported in 2007 than 2004, and the number of murders had gone from 330 to more than 500 in that period.

When the 485 participants in that study were asked to highlight what they thought was the most influential part of the report, only 15 identified the metaphor, while almost everyone else said it was the statistics that swayed their decisions on how to curb crime.

"People like to think they're objective and making decisions based on numbers," Boroditsky said. "They want to believe they're logical. But they're really being swayed by metaphors."

This is ironic. Or not.

ironic / ai-rahn-ik / adjective

1. Pertaining to a figure of speech (irony) in which the intended meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning.
2. Related to a surprising state of affairs opposite to what would naturally be expected: it would be ironic for a car dealer to have to walk to and from work.

Given today's economy, that's not ironic. 

Ironic is often misused, Dr. Goodword intones.

If twin brothers, separated at birth, go on to both marry women named Ursula and keep Egyptian hairless cats, that would be coincidental but not ironic. It is neither coincidental nor ironic that the second President Bush stood on the same inaugural podium where his father stood only 12 years earlier, just a fact. Now I am at a loss for a good example of irony. After all this discussion of irony, that would be ironic. (Of course, it isn't true.) 

Anyone who keeps an Egyptian hairless cat is ironic in my book; I don't care what it means.

Irony, the good doctor continues, is found in expressions of just the opposite of what we mean:

"Oh, no, John doesn't know anything about music" (knowing he graduated with honors from Juilliard). However, be careful here: if this type of irony is spoken caustically, it becomes sarcasm. This is a concept describing some of the more entertaining events of life. "I find it ironic that the chef at Chez Pierre eats his meals around the corner at Sam's Diner." Irony can also be found around the house: "Ironically, Sue's mom found her car keys in the car after ransacking the house for them."

The history of this word is ironic, and I don't care what it means:

Ironic is another in a long line of borrowings from French. This time it began as French ironique, a descendant of late Latin ironicus. The Latin adjective was borrowed from Greek eironikos "dissembling, feigning ignorance", itself an extension of eiron "dissembler". Eiron probably came from eirein "to say". If so, we know that Greek eirein came from the Proto-Indo-European root wer-/wor- "word" which, with the suffix -dho, came directly to English as word and to Latin as verbum "word".

I'm feigning ignorance here.