We are often totally unaware of where the words we use come from — even, or especially, words we use all the time. The prime examples of this are dead metaphors. Before the horrors of the Marne and ...

It’s a standard job interview question. But for Army veteran Dean Trusk, the central character in George F. Walker’s “Dead Metaphor,” the answer is anything but typical.

"Narcissus" by Caravaggio (c. 1598). Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain What is an allegory? An allegory (Greek, "a speaking about something else") is a complete and cohesive narrative, for ...

Source: Francesco Bini/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0 The most famous of all allegories is the Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato compares unphilosophical people to prisoners who, having spent their ...