Reply #6: I did read the article, but I guess I didn't make myself clear to you. [View All]

[aikoaiko]

If liberal and conservative were on a continuum then calling someone a centrist would NOT be a metaphor. Bring in the center would be literal not figurative.

Because liberal and conservative is not a continuum, then centrist is a metaphor because it uses the idea of being in the center for something that is NOT literally center.

eta: Let me give you an example. Many people like to say the human brain is computer. That's a metaphor because the brain is not a computer, but when you call it a computer you think about the brain differently than if you think of it as a non-digital machine.