Metaphoric mash-up of the month

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Dave Davies, "Clarke out of Philly mayor's race — Butkovitz in?", newsworks 1/13/2015:

Butkovitz made it clear months ago he wanted to run for mayor. He engaged an experienced campaign team, but found it hard to raise money, particularly from unions, as long as there was a chance Clarke might run.

In November, Butkovitz called the whole thing off, said he wasn't running. But he said yesterday Clarke's announcement might change his thinking.

"The phone is ringing off the hook today," he said. "There's a large number of people, contributors, activists, calling up and asking me to get into the race. We're going to have to put a barometer into the water here and figure out what the lay of the land is."

Audio for the quote:

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A deft combination of barometer as an instrument for checking atmosphere conditions, and therefore as a metaphorical measure of public opinion; toe in the water evoking the process of checking water temperature in a gingerly way before diving in, and therefore a metaphor for gauging public reaction; and lay of the land as a way of referring to the local topography, and therefore a metaphor for "the disposition of circumstances which one is considering" (as Merriam-Webster has it).

This gives us air, water, and earth — could he have added a fire-related metaphor, say "put a barometer into the water and figure out the lay of the land, so we can strike while the iron is hot". That's not quite right — can anyone think of a fire-related metaphor for evaluating circumstances before making a decision?



26 Comments

  1. Anson said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 9:45 am

    This news has lit a fire under me to stick a barometer in the water and figure out the lay of the land.

  2. Paul Kay said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 9:45 am

    Put a barometer into the water and figure out the lay of the land to find a message that could catch fire.

  3. Toma said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 10:01 am

    We're getting fired up to put a barometer in the water here and figure out what the lay of the land is.

  4. Jerry Friedman said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 10:16 am

    I've got the quintessential fire in the belly to put a barometer into the water here and figure out what the lay of the land is.

  5. GeorgeW said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 10:22 am

    Not an evaluation metaphor, but related: Strike while the fire is hot.

  6. GH said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 10:55 am

    I suppose he's being careful to avoid getting burned.

  7. John said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 11:00 am

    …before I undergo the trial by fire of the campaign trail.

  8. Ginger Yellow said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 11:03 am

    He's just trying to temper expectations.

  9. BZ said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 12:48 pm

    Well, I think it will work. The barometer can indirectly measure altitude, giving the lay of the land. And while you put the barometer in the water, you presumably get your hand wet, which tells you the temperature (or maybe it's one of those barometer/thermometer combos).

    Pointless trivia: the only hit for "barometer in the water" is a physics word problem:
    http://spmphysics.onlinetuition.com.my/2013/06/simple-mercury-barometer-example-7.html

  10. Anson said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 12:59 pm

    And when all was said and done, like cat out of water the barometer in the pond provided little indication of the lay of the land, taking the wind out of his sails after he had burned his bridges behind him.

  11. Dan Lufkin said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 1:11 pm

    Another approach would be to run a barometer up the flagpole and see who salutes. For technical reasons, you need three flagpoles if you also want to know which way the wind is blowing.

  12. Toma said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 1:14 pm

    How about running a barometer up a flagpole and then pissing into the wind?

  13. Daniel Barkalow said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 1:45 pm

    Putting a barometer in the water sounds like a reference to the physics joke where a student explains a variety of ways to determine the height of a building using a barometer (none of which involve measuring air pressure).

    Would the people of Philadelphia vote for Butkovitz for mayor if he promised them a nice barometer (slightly damp)?

  14. Sawney said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 2:24 pm

    In British English, "lie of the land" would be both topographically and politically preferable here [sniff].

  15. Sawney said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 2:27 pm

    And forging alliances may well be on the horizon.

  16. richardelguru said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 2:44 pm

    @ Sawney
    I too (RP speaker, though long-time resident in TX) was thinking 'lie' not 'lay'.
    Is this a US/UK difference? …Or something more sinister???

  17. Eric P Smith said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 2:55 pm

    Lie/lay of the land: yes, US/UK difference.
    http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/the-lie-of-the-land

  18. Eric said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 2:59 pm

    Fire-related metaphor for evaluating circumstances before making a decision: what about test the oven temperature?

  19. Eric P Smith said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 3:00 pm

    Sorry, Eric is Eric P Smith

  20. Jerry Friedman said,

    January 13, 2015 @ 3:53 pm

    There are a few Americans who say "the lie of the land"—at least twelve, counting the eleven I found at COCA. (I admit I didn't check whether all the authors were different or were American.)

  21. Temp said,

    January 14, 2015 @ 3:12 am

    Test/take the temperature of the room

  22. AB said,

    January 14, 2015 @ 9:53 am

    Sounds like a perfect storm: they've already turned up the pressure and piled on the heat, and now they are love-bombing the airwaves with a tidal-wave of hot air in order to hold the candidate's feet to the fire.

    The real million-dollar gorrilla in the room is: how will he keep his feet on the ground once the campaign takes off? This sacred cow could yet prove a trojan horse if the messiah turns out to have heels of clay when the Faustian knot unravels in the cold light of day. Then he'll be trapped like a deer on hot coals with his back to the deep blue sea. One the one hand, if he stands fast and digs himself into the mast he runs the risk that his bedrock of grassroots shock troops will melt faster than quicksand into thin air. On the other hand, if he throws the baby out of the pram and chucks the big guns under the bus in mid stream he'll soon be put out to pasture in an even deeper hole without a paddle.

    Either way, he's paying a heavy price for a school-boy's errand: a weather-vane is not a reliable barometer in a stormy sea, so don't open the flood gates to a false dawn if you're not ready to piss into the whirlwind.

    (cont. p94)

  23. Lazar said,

    January 14, 2015 @ 12:06 pm

    I'm usually up on US/UK differences, but "lie of the land" is new to me.

  24. DWalker said,

    January 14, 2015 @ 1:33 pm

    So his previous decision wasn't nailed in stone?

  25. un malpaso said,

    January 14, 2015 @ 2:45 pm

    Bob Dylan famously said "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", but apparently you do need a water-barometer to figure out the lay of the land.

  26. J. W. Brewer said,

    January 14, 2015 @ 4:35 pm

    The more significant COCA datapoint to me is 232 instances of "lay of the land" compared to 11 for "lie of the land." So if it's an Americanism, it's very much a minority variant, and the ratio between the two options raises for me the question of just how rare a variant has to be before "typo or error" (conceivably a hypercorrection?) becomes the more appropriate characterization of it.

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