As Wall Street plummets, shrinks, crashes, retreats, and melts down into a bear market, analysts and reporters seem uncertain as to which of these metaphors best captures what’s going on. The answer ...

DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: I was listening to a local radio talk show host who described an unexpected event as a “curve ball from left field.” I believe that is called a mixed metaphor. It made me start ...

Can ships and street signs ever mix? Source: iStock; Matthew Barra/Pexels English composition instructors tend to have strong opinions about how the language should be written. You may have been ...

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. No matter if you're in school or well past your days in English class, figures of speech are used every day in our lives. From ...

I've certainly made my share of metaphors in my diary over the years, and here are a few more: * Owning bonds is like picking up nickels in front of a steamroller. * This year has been a period to ...

No matter if you're in school or well past your days in English class, figures of speech are used every day in our lives. From songs and television shows to conversations and advertisements, we often ...