Categories: Comparisons
An example of metaphor in public science discourse:
"So a phage is just a virus that has evolved to infect, and often kill, bacterial cells, so it's a microbe that attacks another microbe. And the word phage comes from bacteriophage, which means bacteria eater, which is not quite what they do, but it is kind of what it looks like is happening when you introduce phage to a lawn of bacteria."
Tom Ireland
Tom Ireland (Editor and Head of Publications at Royal Society of Biology) was being interviewed on an episode of 'BBC Inside Science'.
This example might be considered a 'dead metaphor' as 'lawn' has wide usage within the discilpine of biology.
[Please be aware that a word may have different nuances, or even a different meaning, according to context.]« Back to Index
