Home › Glossary › Letter T

Temporal metaphor

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A metaphor that represents abstract experiences through references to time

Detailed Definition
A temporal metaphor uses time-related concepts (e.g., “time is a river” or “yesterday’s shadow”) to structure understanding of abstract experiences like memory, aging, or history, allowing poets to render the intangible passage of time as a tangible, navigable dimension.
Example
Example in poetry:
Temporal metaphor appears in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12: “the brave day sunk in hideous night”; In Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” compass as time-space metaphor; In Emily Dickinson: “There’s a certain Slant of light”; In contemporary poet Tracy K. Smith: “black hole hum” as cosmic time; In Ocean Vuong: “the past is a wound that won’t close”.
Additional Notes
Metaphor involving time relationships—past/present/future as spatial or physical. Common for exploring memory, history, change. Study how poets physicalize temporal concepts.
Also Known As
Time metaphor Temporal comparison Chronological figure Duration analogy Time-based metaphor
Skip to main content