Great Black Speakers: Use Of Metaphors In Powerful Speech
Powerful speakers recognize the metaphor as one of the most powerful linguistic tools in their speaking arsenal, and they use them when appropriate. Like their cousin the simile, a metaphor is a figure of speech, meaning that it is a phrase with a meaning that diverges from the literal meaning of the words used. Specifically, a metaphor connects two things that are in the ordinary course of things completely unrelated.
Metaphors often go even further from the literal meaning of the words used than similes, and as a result their meaning can be very subtle. In many ways they show the cleverness and complexity of language and of the human brain that creates it.
Technically, metaphors are said to be divided into the familiar (called the vehicle), and the unfamiliar (the tenor). The unfamiliar is described by reference to the familiar. An example of a metaphor is