Sunday, May 31, 2015

Mucking It Up

From a piece on Game Of Thrones in The Hollywood Reporter: "Stannis is mired in the snow, attempting to get to Winterfell."

Can you be mired in snow? "Mired" literally means to be stuck in mud. There's no mud when Winter Is Coming.

I'm reminded of a metaphor I saw during the Iraq war. I couldn't track down the original use, but enough people thought it was smart that I saw it quoted in a few places--Bush had "galvanized a quagmire."

So he ran electricity through a swamp?  That would be weird.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The war against figurative language is ongoing

6:06 AM, May 31, 2015  
Blogger ColumbusGuy said...

I don't think galvanized a quagmire should be counted among examples of figurative language. I think it should be moved exclusively to irredeemably stupid phrases.

1:38 PM, May 31, 2015  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

well you would be expert

3:33 PM, May 31, 2015  

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