As a further enforcement of this fact, let us analyze the word rough.  In its literal application, it may designate any surface that has ridges, projections, or inequalities and is therefore uneven, jagged, rugged, scraggy, or scabrous.  Now frequently a man’s face or head is rough because unshaved or uncombed; also the fur of an animal is rough.  Hence the term could be used for unkempt, disheveled, shaggy, hairy, coarse, bristly.  “The child ran its hand over its father’s rough cheek” and “The bear had a rough coat” are sentences that even the most unimaginative mind can understand.  We speak of rough timber because its surface has not been planed or made smooth.  We speak of a rough diamond because it is unpolished, uncut.  Note that all these uses are literal, that in each instance some unevenness of surface is referred to.

But man, urged on by the desire to say what he means with more novelty, strikingness, or force, applied the word to ideas that have no surfaces to be uneven.  He imagined what these ideas would be like if they had surfaces.  Of course in putting these conceptions into language he was creating figures of speech, some of them startlingly apt, some of them merely far-fetched.  He said a man had a rough voice, as though the voice were like a cactus in its prickly irregularities.  By rough he meant what his fellows meant when they spoke of the voice as harsh, grating, jarring, discordant, inharmonious, strident, raucous, or unmusical.  Going farther, that early poet said the weather was rough.  He thought of clement weather as being smooth and even, but of inclement, severe, stormy, tempestuous, or violent weather as being full of projections to rend and harass one.  Thus an everyday use of the term today was once wrenched and immoderate speech.  Possibly the first man who heard of rough weather was puzzled for a moment, then amused or delighted as he caught the figure.  It did not require great originality to think of a crowd as rough in its movements.  But our poet applied the idea to an individual.  To him a rude, uncivil, impolite, ungracious, uncourteous, unpolished, uncouth, boorish, blunt, bluff, gruff, brusk, or burly person was as the unplaned lumber or the unpolished gem; and we imitative moderns still call such a man rough.  But we do not think of the man as covered with projections that need to be taken off, unless forsooth we receive rough treatment at his hands.  And note how far we have journeyed from the original idea of the word when we say “I gave the report a rough glance,” meaning cursory, hasty, superficial, or incomplete consideration.

Many very simple words, including several of those already treated in this chapter, are two-sided in that they are both literal and figurative.

EXERCISE L

Trace each of the following words from its literal to its figurative applications, giving synonyms for each of its uses.