Metaphors Be with You: An A to Z Dictionary of History's Greatest Metaphorical Quotations

As up-to-date as the pun of the title, Mardy Grothe's collection of quotations is a handy reference as well as an entertaining diversion. Metaphors Be with You is tidily organized into 10 metaphors in 250 categories--pick a topic!--and includes QR codes to integrate the book digitally with the author's online database of more than 100,000 metaphorical quotations, which he launched in 2014.

Grothe's enthusiasm for metaphors is infectious. A retired psychologist and author of six language books (including Oxymoronica), his collection began 50 years ago, when he was moved by Thoreau's "different drummer" passage in Walden. In a concise introductory section, he notes that metaphors demonstrate the evolution of language: "Time is money" (Ben Franklin) morphed into "He spent a ton of time." He defines the metaphor's cousins--simile ("less assertive") and analogy ("more cerebral")--and shares his history as a metaphor collector turned curator, as well as the span of his collection's origins: from ancient Greece and Rome to Downton Abbey.

In each of the categories, Ability through Zeal, Grothe has narrowed the metaphors to the 10 best. If readers don't find their nominee for a stellar quote, he suggests they refer to his website and the hundreds of entries on each topic, comparing the website and book with having oceanfront property with a swimming pool in the back.

Dip into these 2,500 nuggets from Mark Twain, Bill Gates, Delia Ephron and many more to bolster a speech or just to savor the pithy prose. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

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