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byRichard Nordquist
Updated April 25, 2017
Examples
"[A]ll the following concepts are characterized by an 'upward' orientation, while their
'opposites' receive a 'downward' orientation.
MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN: Speak up, please. Keep your voice down, please.
HEALTHY IS UP; SICK IS DOWN: Lazarus rose from the dead. He fell ill.
CONSCIOUS IS UP; UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN: Wake up. He sank into a coma.
CONTROL IS UP; LACK OF CONTROL IS DOWN: I'm on top of the situation. He
is under my control.
HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN: I'm feeling up today. He's really low these days.
VIRTUE IS UP; LACK OF VIRTUE IS DOWN: She's an upstanding citizen. That was
a low-down thing to do.
RATIONAL IS UP; NONRATIONAL IS DOWN: The discussion fell to an emotional
level. He couldn't rise above his emotions.
Here good health is associated with 'up,' in part because of the general metaphor that
'Better is up' and perhaps also because when we are well we are on our feet, and when
we are ill we are more likely to be lying down.
"In actuality we feel that no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately
represented independently of its experiential basis. For example, MORE IS UP has a
very different kind of experiential basis than HAPPY IS UP or RATIONAL IS UP.
Though the concept UP is the same in all these metaphors, the experiences on which
these UP metaphors are based are very different. It is not that there are many different
UPS; rather, verticality enters our experience in many different ways and so gives rise to
many different metaphors." (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
The University of Chicago Press, 1980