Knowing the vicissitudes of medical research, I expected a fair number of flashes in the pan and flies in the ointment, but neither is a common metaphor in PubMed. I had somehow thought that flash in the pan came from gold-mining: the miner, as he swilled water around his pan, being deceived by the flash […]
Category: Metaphor watch
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Time to come off the gold standard
This blog started with epidemic proportions. There are nearly 1800 PubMed articles written in English that have epidemic proportions in the title or abstract. Of the other metaphors I’ve dealt with, some are more common and some are less: there are 5000 drawbacks, 900 Holy Grails, 100 red herrings. But these pale before the gold […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: leave business metaphors to business
Some metaphors have gone beyond cliché to parody, and should never be written in a medical article. They include at the end of the day, level playing field, and moving the goalposts. They are redolent of dodgy business practices. There is no excuse for writing “at the end of the day” instead of the simpler […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Guns and needles
Sometimes research goes badly, and red herrings lead to a blind alley (qv), but sometimes there’s a smoking gun: conclusive evidence just a little bit short of being caught in the act. But note “just a little bit short.” This means that smoking gun shouldn’t be applied to properly conclusive evidence, and that it doesn’t […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Rocks, horns, devils, and hard places
A dilemma is not just an irritating problem, like trying to decide whether to go to Costa or Starbucks, which anyway gives the option of not having coffee at all. The essence of a dilemma (from the Greek: lemma meaning premise) is that both options have nasty consequences, but one of the options has to […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Three weeks on the front line
This blog has so far picked a metaphor, or a theme for metaphors, and searched for them. There are many metaphors that are less overt. For the last blog of 2015, here are the metaphors from three weeks’ worth of editorials in print BMJs. There was a stronger role for preventive care in the NHS, […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Pandora’s box and double-edged swords
From the Holy Grail (qv) to Pandora’s Box. Pandora’s Box has mutated. When Pandora opened her box, the evils flew out and could not be put back in. All that remained when she closed the lid was Hope. But the dictionary definition (COD) is “a process that once begun generates many complicated problems.” A good […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Holy Grail
The Holy Grail (COD) is the cup or platter used by Christ at the Last Supper, and in which St Joseph of Arimathea received Christ’s blood. As such, it is a metaphor for anything that is eagerly sought after. There is much in medicine that is eagerly sought after—not least, magic bullets (qv)—and there are […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: The magic bullet
The expression magic bullet is due to the German medical scientist Paul Ehrlich, who was seeking a cure for syphilis. He wanted to find chemical substances with specific affinity for the pathogen. The one that eventually proved effective, which Ehrlich named Salvarsan, was the 606th of a series of arsenical compounds tested, although the 914th, […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: Low hanging cherries
To cherry pick is to choose selectively. It’s supposed to originate from the way cherry pickers select the ripest, unblemished cherries to pick; why cherries rather than apples, oranges, or any other fruit is unclear. It is a modern expression. The Oxford English Dictionary first records it in 1966, from The Times, although it first […]