You've probably seen the Axa Equitable commercials in which a large primate laments that his financial advice goes unheeded. "Why listen to me?" he says. "I'm just the 800-lb. gorilla in the room."
He may be, but he is also a mutant metaphor. It's "the elephant in the room" everyone persists in ignoring. The 800-lb. gorilla, as the riddle goes, "sleeps anywhere he wants."
I'm not talking about entertainingly dumb mixed metaphors, recorded elsewhere online. I'm talking about true mutant metaphors, ones that, through repetition, fall into almost acceptable use.
Ever hear someone claim to be "back at ground zero"? I though it was tough enough being "back at square one," which is where things start. But "ground zero"—that's where they end. Sometimes in a mushroom cloud.
Next time you hear someone "ran the gauntlet," you should throw down the gauntlet (a glove) on that one. Because it's the gantlet they were running.
Some say these mutant metaphors have been "set in stone," but that's not likely. Set in concrete maybe. Carved in stone, perhaps. But to set them in stone you'd need molten lava.
You can take these warnings with a dose of salts (although I'd prefer you took them with a grain of salt). But as George W. Bush said, the time has come to "make the pie higher." Mutant metaphors, however commonplace, make you look illiterate to those who know better.
Best way to avoid them: Have someone look over what you've written. Second best is to scope it out on the Web. But be careful—mutants are widespread. A search on "beyond a question of a doubt" turned up over 11,000 hits, even though the phrase is "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
I once had a colleague, a queen of the mixed metaphor, complain about a client who was "raping me over the coals." They're what? I asked. "Dave," she said, "I'm up a tree without a paddle."
And so she was.
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