Clouseau

That isn't what I wrote, though. I can see a dictionary will be of no use until you learn to read accurately.

VoxRat

I quoted what you wrote, so there would be no confusion. What you wrote is self-contradictory. You say that's my reading comprehension problem. I say it's your writing problem. I have to tell you I've lived a long time, making my living reading and writing. I'm not aware of anyone - other than the occasional internet Fundy - who has ever impeached my reading skills.

So, consider: the problem here might possibly be yours.

If you want to amend, or explain, please do. But perhaps you'd rather just be smarmy.

Clouseau

Out of context.

spin

We were supposed to be dealing with metaphors, not cliches like "hard to swallow". As it is such a well-worn phrase, the reader processes "hard to swallow" as a semantic unit. How it applies, yes, you have to read the article, but it is no use to your argument.

When Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage and the men and women merely players..." this was an extended metaphor and the reader/listener had to know what each word meant to understand how the metaphor worked. One needed to understand that the definition of "world" didn't fit with the definition of "stage". How can one make sense of "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York" without having grappled with the significance of each word in its context and found that you couldn't grasp the meaning until you read/heard more? Metaphor works against the usual semantic content provided by the words in the figure of speech. If you don't know the meanings of the individual words, then you won't understand the metaphor.


spin

VoxRat

Out of patience.
Sadly, I conclude that The Inspector is more interested in honing his snarkiness skills than in any meaningful exchange of ideas.

Clouseau

Out of road.

DISSIDENT AGGRESSOR

Good fig, bad "Christian".

spin

Out of mind.

Amaleq13

No, I specifically used the synonym "meaning" for "senses" to highlight the absurdity of your statement. That you continue to refuse to acknowledge it is simply bizarre.

Do you honestly not understand that the "sense" of a word is the "meaning" of the word?

Is English not your first language?

Yes, the meaning of a word is derived from context.
I suggest you refer to a thesaurus. Everybody else here seems to have an adequate grasp on the terminology.

You either have a poor grasp of the language or you are playing games.

The former can be rectified through effort while the latter can only be rectified by administrator action.

Clouseau

They aren't synonyms. The word 'swallow' has either a literal or a metaphoric sense, but only one meaning in use in 'hard to swallow'. The meaning of a word is derived from a dictionary, the sense is derived from context. Even the context of the phrase 'hard to swallow' is insufficient to determine sense. One needs a whole sentence or at least a clause to determine sense.