In one sense – a figure of speech in which the word or expression is transferred from its usual area to someone else; more generally, the name of each trope or figure of speech.
There is a huge and still growing literature on metaphor.
In this literature, there are various and contradictory thoughts on this trope. While its importance for the understanding of language and perhaps other sign systems is recognized by almost all writers on the subject, it is quite difficult to find an area of agreement on any other topic related to it.
