It is impossible to crush the Government’s aim to restore the means of living and working freely.  ‘Crush’ for baffle, ‘aim’ for purpose, are both dead metaphors so long as they are kept apart, but the juxtaposition forces on us the thought that you cannot crush an aim.

National military training is the bedrock on which alone we can hope to carry through the great struggles which the future may have in store for us.  ‘Bedrock’ and ‘carry through’ are both moribund or dormant, but not stone-dead.

The vogue of the motor-car seems destined to help forward the provision of good road-communication, a feature which is sadly in arrear.  Good road-communication may be a feature, and it may be in arrear, and yet a feature cannot be in arrear; things that are equal to the same thing may be equal to each other in geometry, but language is not geometry.

They are cyphers living under the shadow of a great man.

He stood, his feet glued to the spot, his eyes riveted on the heavens.

The Geddes report is to be emasculated a little in the Cabinet, and then thrown at the heads of the Electorate.

Viscount Grey’s suggestion may, in spite of everything, prove the nucleus of solution.

The superior stamina of the Oxonian told in no half-hearted measure. [Even careful writers are sometimes unaware of the comical effect of some chance juxtaposition of words and ideas, whereby a dormant metaphor is set on its legs.  Thus Leslie Stephen in his life of Swift wrote:  Sir William Temple, though he seems to have been vigorous and in spite of gout a brisk walker, was approaching his grave.  And again when he was triumphantly recording the progress of agnosticism he has:  Even the high-churchmen have thrown the Flood overboard. [ED.]]

E. Mixed Metaphors

For the examples given in D, tasteless word-selection is a fitter description than mixed metaphor, since each of the words that conflict with others is not intended, as a metaphor at all.  ‘Mixed metaphor’ is more appropriate when one or both of the terms can only be consciously metaphorical.  Little warning is needed against it; it is so conspicuous as seldom to get into speech or print undetected.

This is not the time to throw up the sponge, when the enemy, already weakened and divided, are on the run to a new defensive position.  A mixture of prize-ring and battlefield.

In the following extract from a speech it is difficult to be sure how many times metaphors are mixed; readers versed in the mysteries of oscillation may be able to decide: