Saturday 4 November 2017

Too-Appropriate Metaphors 8


The Forestry Commission should go back to its roots. (Countryfile)

The red pine, which sprouts from dry forest soil like a giant, untamed bonsai tree.

The guns triggered an explosion of violence.
 (Programme about headhunters. You pull a trigger to fire a gun, not the other way round.)

This Civil War cannonball really blows me away! (David Harper)

She then uses a tiny scalpel to carefully trim the razor-thin fibres growing from the tips of a highly endangered Mediterranean clam. (BBC Razor too near scalpel. And how can a fibre be “razor thin”? Things are usually “razor sharp”. Do you mean “incredibly fine”? And it would help to know how long they are.)

Experts warn of chaotic fallout from nuclear plan (June 2017)

The loch bed is brimming with artefacts. (Alice Roberts)

The tail of a feathered dinosaur has been found perfectly preserved in amber from Myanmar. The one-of-a-kind discovery helps put flesh on the bones of these extinct creatures, opening a new window on the biology of a group that dominated Earth for more than 160 million years. (BBC – mixed as well. Actually the discovery helps put feathers on their skin...)

No matter how good the piece, I reckon white English-language writers talking about Hong Kong autonomy should probably avoid the verb "kowtow". (@johnb78)

The family have ice cream in their blood! (Countryfile)
Royalty is in the Queen’s DNA. (Or was it “horses”? Either way...)

“He was dogged,” says woman stalked by wolf overnight in Canadian wilderness. (June 2016)

The project hoping to bring Yorkshire’s cemeteries back to life. (@DrDonnaYates)

Don’t sell the South Bank down the river! (And move it to Greenwich?)

While concrete was being poured to create other giant urban spaghetti junctions across Europe, Copenhagen found itself at a crossroads.

In Henry’s day they just cut your head off: so you get the sense, all the time, of the characters living on a knife-edge. (Hilary Mantel. I expect they were sitting under a sword of Damocles as well.)

These photographs are a snapshot of a particular time. (Flog It!)

Fifty years on, there’s a new coin, hot off the press! (Aled Jones could have used “freshly minted”.)

POSSIBLY INTENTIONAL
Stag party on boar hunt

Are Asia’s water politics reaching boiling point?
To play the ostrich is to be a goose
May told to call off dogs before Boris bites back
Full Steam Ahead for HS2
Palmerston the cat is no EU ‘mole’, insists foreign secretary. 

More here, and links to the rest.

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