One point made in “See Through Words” by Michael Erard was the ability or rather inability to reverse them. He shares, “[t]hey’re preoccupied with questions such as why metaphors aren’t reversible…” which is intriguing. I have never thought about reversing a metaphor because all you are doing is comparing two things. Therefore, I always assumed that they could be reversed without ever trying it. An example that I used to make the conclusion was “a bottleneck is like english”. This is hard to interpret and comprehend the meaning behind it, whereas “english is like a bottleneck” is easily understood and has a completely different meaning.

Another point that was made in the piece was about the interpretations of metaphors. Erard referred to an older metaphor by Tom Boyce saying, “[h]e used it to describe two types of child, one who did well in a range of circumstances (the dandelion), and one who succeeded only under a narrow set of circumstances (the orchid)”. This metaphors original meaning was not the same as what people thought it to be. When the metaphor got around, people interpreted it differently as they believed that the orchid was better since the flower itself was more rare than a dandelion. This was interesting to think about. It just shows one more factor that is taken into account when creating a metaphor; the ability to interpret and apply different meanings. Therefore concluding that the best metaphor is one that majority of people interpret the same. It is interesting to think about the process and all of the factors and work that goes into making a metaphor. However, thanks to Erard’s piece, I am able to appreciate it so much more.