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The game's afoot...
It's generally hard to escape any kind of sports fervor, and this month I've been even more attuned to sports metaphors in everyday language. There are the easy ones: he took a shot, slam dunk, hit a home run, etc. Then there are the ones that baffle, a recent favorite being heat on the fastball. Take any sort of competitive play, and you'll see sports metaphors in clear abundance in American English. Consider political races, where opponents are likely to engage public sensibilities with references to knockdowns, fair play, and phrases such as win at all costs, etc. JFK even said: "Politics is like football. If you see daylight, go through the hole." Business news also frequently engages in sports verbiage to explain difficult concepts to the public. However, most of these references tend to be very culture specific—I imagine only Americans can truly appreciate or relate to baseball metaphors. Also, it leads one to wonder about sports metaphors in other languages such as French, Hindi, etc. For now though, as an avid soccer fan, I'm calling a flag on the play and persistently only using soccer metaphors, whether anyone understands me or not. (ELHAM) Tags: english, language, sports
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