Metaphor The term 'metaphor', as the etymology of the word reveals, means transference of some quality from one object to another. From the times. of ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric, the term has been known to denote the transference of meaning from one word to another. It is still widely used to designate the process in which a word acquires a derivative meaning. A metaphor becomes a stylistic device when two different phenomena (things, events, ideas, actions) are simultaneously brought to mind by the imposition of some or all of the inherent properties of one object on the other which by nature is deprived of these properties. Such an imposition generally results when the creator of the metaphor finds in the two corresponding objects certain features which to his eye have something in common. "Dear Nature is the kindest Mother still" (Byron) the notion Mother arouses in the mind the actions of nursing, weaning, caring for, etc., whereas the notion Nature does not. There is no true similarity, but there is a kind of identification. Therefore it is better to define metaphor as the power of realizing two lexical meanings simultaneously. Due to this power metaphor is one of the most potent means of creating images. An image is a sensory perception of an abstract notion already existing in the mind. Consequently, to create an image means to bring a phenomenon from the highly abstract to the essentially concrete. Thus the example given above where the two concepts Mother and Nature are brought together in the interplay of their meanings, brings up the image of Nature materialized into but not likened to the image of Mother. Metaphors, like all stylistic devices, can be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness. Thus metaphors which are absolutely unexpected, i.e. are quite unpredictable, are called genuine metaphors. Those which are -commonly used in speech and therefore are sometimes even fixed in dictionaries as expressive means of language are trite metaphors, or dead metaphors. Their predictability therefore is apparent. Genuine' metaphors are regarded as belonging to language-in-action, i. e. speech- metaphors; trite metaphors belong to the language-as-a-systero, i.e. language proper, and are usually fixed in dictionaries as units of the language.