Occasionally, the intensity of these dream states is so incandescent as to hint at more than mere metaphor.

For a runaway slave, that exhortation was no mere romantic metaphor but a coded message leading to freedom.

To call the historical society the city's attic was no mere metaphor, but a description of the level of care given many of its possessions.

I have never seen a man so utterly humiliated and destroyed by "mere" metaphor before or since.

It is indeed mere metaphor to talk of the eloquence of mute nature, or the language of winds and waves.

But at a deeper level Lewis wanted to make it plain that talking in this way was not mere metaphor.

Are all these tales mere metaphor, or is something supernatural controlling our musical impulses?

They are the foot soldier using a musket, appears rarely, if at all, in earlier writings, unless as a mere metaphor.

In this novel, of course, I portray Gaia as more than a mere metaphor.

In Christian theology the word must be a personal and a proper name of God; hence it cannot be dismissed as mere metaphor.