Talk: Figure of speech

PNA-incomplete[]

Figure of speech

• TNG:
  • "Angel One"
  • "Too Short A Season"
  • "Clues"
  • "All Good Things..."
• DS9:
  • "Destiny"
  • "Visionary"
  • "You Are Cordially Invited"
• VOY:
  • "Deadlock"
  • "The Q and the Grey"

Figuratively

• TOS:
  • "A Taste of Armageddon"
  • "Whom Gods Destroy"
• VOY: "Future's End, Part II"

Comparison

• ENT: "A Night in Sickbay"
• TOS: "The Tholian Web"
• TNG:
  • "The Last Outpost"
  • "Where Silence Has Lease"
  • "The Most Toys"
• DS9:
  • "It's Only a Paper Moon"
  • "Return to Grace"
• VOY: "The 37's"

By comparison

• ENT: "Dear Doctor"
• TNG:
  • "Where No Man Has Gone Before"
  • "Justice"
  • "Brothers"
  • "Preemptive Strike"
• VOY: "The 37's"

In comparison

• TOS: "A Taste of Armageddon"
• TAS: "Bem"
• DS9:
  • "To the Death"
  • "The Sword of Kahless"
• VOY: "Concerning Flight"

Comparing

• TNG: "The Neutral Zone"
• VOY:
  • "The Q and the Grey"
  • "Ashes to Ashes"

Compared

• ENT:
  • "Strange New World"
  • "Civilization"
  • "Shuttlepod One"
  • "Precious Cargo"
  • "Harbinger"
  • "Terra Prime"
• TOS:
  • "Mirror, Mirror"
  • "The Trouble with Tribbles"
  • "The Ultimate Computer"
  • "Elaan of Troyius"
• TAS: "Beyond the Farthest Star"
• TNG:
  • "The Last Outpost"
  • "The Dauphin"
  • "Q Who"
  • "The High Ground"
  • "The Most Toys"
  • "Sarek"
  • "Qpid"
  • "Face Of The Enemy"
  • "Thine Own Self"
  • "Firstborn"
• DS9:
  • "Heart of Stone"
  • "Indiscretion"
  • "Broken Link"
  • "Let He Who Is Without Sin..."
  • "Favor the Bold"
  • "You Are Cordially Invited"
  • "Once More Unto the Breach"
  • "The Emperor's New Cloak"
  • "Chimera"
• VOY:
  • "Cold Fire"
  • "Day of Honor"
  • "Year of Hell"

--Alan (talk) 12:47, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

Broaden topic[]

Earlier today, I suggested to merge the new article Chicken and the egg with this page. However, thinking about it further, that doesn't seem to be an idiom but a simple metaphor. Similarly, I'm not sure if "Needle in a haystack" really is an idiom.

Now, idioms are just a special case of metaphors - one where the act of "comparing" situations isn't that prominent anymore. So, to avoid having two articles about very similar topics, I suggest to rename this one to Metaphor and continue to use it for both metaphors and idioms. -- Cid Highwind 23:06, February 6, 2011 (UTC)

It might be worth keeping in mind that there's also a page called Proverb, which uses a very liberal interpretation of the concept for it's examples, and that there's a whole lot of canon sayings and expressions, which are currently either not documented, or in Proverb. This might be the time to start thinking about a more integrated solution. -- Capricorn 16:10, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. A metaphor page could also have a little blurb about the Tamarian language, since Picard mentioned that it uses metaphors.--31dot 21:13, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Do we have a term that would cover a combination of Idiom and Proverb? We already have the same saying on both pages in "needle in the haystack", so a combined page seems like a good idea. - Archduk3 00:17, June 11, 2011 (UTC)

Redux[]

This seemed to run out of steam last time, in that nothing was done, so I'm reopening the discussion with notices, so this will at least be listed somewhere. Metaphor seem fine enough for both idioms and proverbs, since there is overlap between the two, based on Google results when searching for both words. - Archduk3 21:41, February 24, 2012 (UTC)

Split[]

While the discussion at Talk:Gift horse has stalled... the bigger issue is still what to do with this page. I've made an attempt to link every term mentioned on this page to an episode that mentions that term (interestingly "figure of speech" was emboldened on the page but no link existed to support it), but I've also looked into how this should be separated.

Quite frankly, the term "metaphor" shouldn't be used as an umbrella term for this article. I've dug around and I think it is fair to say the following suggestion is an accurate split of the page, taking this in a two-step article fix.

In plain terms, using the page's current format, move Metaphor --> Figure of speech (as the page title), and split off the terms defined as Sayings. This is based on a seemingly universal schism of the terms that I've looked into abroad. The list below would be the arrangement of this one article and associated links becoming two articles, then perhaps more as sublisted:

• Saying*/Saw
  • Aphorism/Adage
    • Precept
    • Proverb
    • Pearl of wisdom/Words of wisdom
  • Cliché*
    • Platitude/Stereotype
  • Idiom
    • Expression
    • Phrase
  • Motto*
    • Credo
    • Maxim
    • Slogan*
  • Truism
    • Axiom*/Postulate
    • Dogma
    • Paradox
  • Word play*
    • Banter
    • Witticism (pun, quip, repartee, sarcasm*)
• Figure of speech
  • Analogy/Comparison (an explicit simile)
  • Epitaph*
  • Euphemism*
  • Figuratively
  • Hyperbole*/Rhetorical question*
  • Irony
  • Metaphor* (an implicit simile)
  • Personification*
  • Understatement

With that said, this would be the first step in the right direction on handling this page. The next step would be to explore if any of the redirected terms should then be, themselves, split from one of the (now) two new articles once context is established. As of present, there are very few citations, or at least context derived definitions to what is essentially just a list of idioms someone said for some reason that need to be fleshed out. In doing so, these articles will increase in mass significantly – also note this is listed among the Category:Memory Alpha pages with too many expensive parser function calls. --Alan (talk) 17:05, November 16, 2018 (UTC)

• Anaphora ("wrong/right place at the wrong/right time") --LauraCC (talk) 20:49, May 2, 2019 (UTC)
• antithesis (antithetical)--LauraCC (talk) 20:49, May 2, 2019 (UTC)