nonmetaphorical
- adjective
- /nɒnˌmɛtəˈfɔrɪkəl/
:
no metafórico
- Her nonmetaphorical approach to the poem helped the audience understand its literal meaning.
Examples
-
Jane Austen's belief qualifiers, for example, almost always are found in collocation with relatively nonmetaphorical inferences.
Academic text (1992) -
The speaker used nonmetaphorical language to explain the complex scientific phenomenon.
-
" Neither anthropologists nor literary critics could possibly think in a nonmetaphorical way, but the more conscious we become about our metaphors, the more useful we can make them."
Academic text (1999) -
In the texts under discussion, however, where the importance of the sense of smell takes predominance over smells themselves, and where the sense of smell described is in every case an infallible one, there is less such movement between the metaphorical and nonmetaphorical levels of reference.
Academic text (1999) -
Apart from Wells, Sheriff Bell is the character who has the most exposure to death—death not as personified by Chigurh but the nonmetaphorical death lawmen face almost every day.
Blog text (20) -
In a nonmetaphorical sense, the data shows a clear relationship between education and income.
Synonyms
120
3.5
Exactly true without exaggeration or metaphor
1
8.7
Using plain words that mean exactly what they say
A way of showing things that does not use signs and shows real objects directly
Does not give a hidden meaning and only shows what is seen
Antonyms
34
6.6
Language that describes one thing by comparing it to another, not its real meaning
How Metaphorical
Surface Forms
Morphology
nonmetaphorical = metaphorical (transparent) = non + metaphor + ical
A straightforward negative prefix 'non-' attached to the adjective 'metaphorical', yielding the literal negation of 'metaphorical'.
Etymology
Nonmetaphorical is made of non- meaning 'not' and metaphor, a word that originally meant 'to carry meaning across' from one thing to another. So nonmetaphorical means 'not using metaphor' and describes language that stays plain and 'literal', which is why we use it for clear, exact wording.