The Dying Metaphors Examples

In Monday's class, we talked about the " Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell. The article is about how to write the article in a proper way and use correct words to make the passage clear, precise and creative. Orwell introduces 4 ways of misusing words in the article: dying metaphors, operators or verbal false limbs, pretentious diction and meaningless words.

I find an example online about the dying metaphors. The misuse was found by Michael P. Marks. In some articles, many people may write " the body of the essay" to show the main part of the writing. But now this meaning is known by everyone so that we can not find anything new from this phrase. It is meaningless to use this in the article to describe the importance of the article.

Lets see a more famous example by President Nasheed in 2009. He said in his speech:" I am not a scientist, but I know that one of the laws of physics, is that you cannot negotiate with the laws of physics. Three - Five – Oh is a law of atmospheric physics. You cannot cut a deal with Mother Nature. And we don’t intend to try.This is why, in March, the Maldives announced plans to become the first carbon neutral country in the world. We intend to become carbon neutral in ten years. We will switch from oil to 100% renewable energy. And we will offset aviation pollution, until a way can be found to decarbonise air transport too." In this paragraph, he used the phrase " Mother Nature". We always considered nature as our mom because she brings everything to us. The overuse of the term is boring and lack of imagination. We need to avoid this kind of problems in our writing and be creative all the time.