Metaphors occasionally impede understanding, when people fail to recognize the metaphor. The words long and short describe a spatial dimension(of, for example, a table), but they also can describe a span of (invisible) time. For example, many words for concepts without visible correlates, such as temporal terms, are taken from the vocabulary of spatial language. Metaphor is considered by cognitive scientists to be a very powerful conceptual tool because it allows language users to express abstract concepts by reference to more concrete concepts which are more accessible and understandable. The garment was given the name for a bell because of its cut: It created a somewhat bell-like shape when draped over the shoulders and allowed to fall vertically to the knees or below, where it "belled" out from the body. For example, a cape-like garment that protected against the weather was given the name cloak, a word borrowed from French, in which it meant 'bell'. Thus, the meanings of many words have their origin in metaphor. Metaphor is an extremely common and pervasive process in language usage and its results frequently become conventionalized. But metaphor is not just associated with poetic language or especially high-flown literary language. The fragility of life is thus emphasized. The expression candle in the wind likens life to a candle flame that may easily be blown out by any passing draft or gust. The expression, You are the sunshine of my life compares someone's beloved with sunshine something that is impossible in literal terms unless that person becomes a ball of nuclear fusion. Examples of metaphors in everyday language abound. No artificial system, such as models in artificial intelligence, can decode metaphors, and certainly no such system can produce them. It is traditionally thought of as a kind of comparison, although how we make instant and internally consistent comparisons between quite disparate things is not really understood.
Metaphor is a complex cognitive phenomenon.
The result is that the latter two words have gone from being synonyms to almost exact antonyms. The first kept its negative meaning, but lost some of its intensity the second came to be associated with positive qualities and only then weakened its intensity.
Similar developments are found with terrible 'inspiring terror' and its onetime synonym terrific. The word in informal usage now just means 'very bad'. But now the intensity of the expression has faded somewhat and an awful tasting medicine need not inspire any deep sense of awe. People began to use the word in contexts where the awe felt was due to something's extreme negative qualities, as in an awfully bad performance. At some point it came to mean 'breath-takingly bad so bad that it fills (a person) with awe and amazement'. For example, awful originally meant 'awe-inspiring, filling (someone) with deep awe', as in the awful majesty of the Creator. Often in the course of semantic change, a word shifts its meaning to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. Semantic change in the context of words describes the gradual shift in the conventional meaning of words, as people use them in new types of contexts and these usages become normal. Linguists describe these relations and also try to characterize with as much precision as possible the meanings of words and other linguistic elements. These relations include homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, hypernymy, and hyponymy. One area of study is the study of the semantic relations between different linguistic expressions, usually words. In Linguistics, Semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or 'significant meaning', derived from sema 'sign') is traditionally defined as the study of meaning.
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