What metaphors have people forgot were ever metaphors?

Highly recommend Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By if you’re interested in this topic. They break down concepts that have developed into their current form (within a given cultural and linguistic community) with the metaphors used to talk about the concept.

For example, in English “argument is war.” I won the debate. She’s on my side. His position is indefensible.

Or, also in English, “time is money.” Not the cliche phrase “time is money,” but conceptually time is money, or at least a precious resource: I spend time on it. Don’t waste my time. You need to invest in your future.

It gets a lot more nuanced, but the idea is that there is no reason why these things naturally get spoken about similarly. A language/culture might conceptualize “argument as dance” or “time is water.” The fact that these forms are so deeply embedded in the language (arguably) speaks to how we actually interact with the concepts represented. Re these two specific examples, these fit well with an individualist and capitalist mindset. Maybe they came out of it, maybe they reinforce it, maybe both.

Very cool, short, easy read. Impressively accessible compared to anything else in the realm of linguistic relativity.

Flagship. The flagship is the ship that leads the fleet, but people use it to describe quality. When Nothing launched their first phone, it was a flagship because it was their only ship, but people argued it wasn’t a flagship because it didn’t use Qualcomm’s flagship chipset. People continue to refer to all of Apple’s newest numbered iPhone models as flagships, and recently looped the 16e into that group, but the Pro line is obviously the flagship line. The other models are other ships in the fleet.

Honestly, our own sight is a kind of "metaphor" - what we see is a construction the brain creates to make sense of visual data, but it is not those visual data themselves, in some sense we only see in metaphors.

Maybe that bends the meaning of metaphor. Maybe better examples would be like skeumorphisms in graphical user interfaces, e.g. a trashbin on a desktop that you can drag files to. Obviously there is no literal trashbin, but I think people start to think in terms of those metaphors and forget there aren't actual files and folders and a trashbin, and when the computer behaves in a way that doesn't accord with those metaphors, it's frustrating and confusing for them.