“To be a master of metaphor is the greatest thing by far”

That's Aristotle, by the way, whose Poetics is still going strong 2,000+ years later.

Metaphor, which is simply describing something as something else, is arguably the greatest tool at a writer's disposal. As James Geary writes in I Is an Other, a metaphor isn't just a "cognitive frill”—it's essential to how we communicate.

Linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson took this argument a step further in their seminal book Metaphors We Live By:

Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

In other words, a metaphor isn't just a communication tool, it's a fundamental mechanism of thought. We think in metaphor.

Once you see it - this pervasiveness of metaphor - it’s difficult to unsee. Consider tech writing. I’ve written some educational content on blockchain topics like smart contracts and zero-knowledge proofs. Metaphors help people wrap their head around these otherwise opaque concepts. For example, smart contracts are often compared to vending machines since they function in a similar way.

But zoom out a bit and you’ll notice that “smart contract” is itself a metaphor for a computer program. In the spirit of Voltaire, who said the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, a smart contract is neither "smart" nor a "contract"—these words are just heuristics.

Zoom out even further and you’ll see almost all crypto terminology is metaphor. At root crypto is code, yet it employs terms like:

• wallet
• fork
• bridge
• block
• gas
• ramp

These metaphors render the abstract concrete. They concretize.

The very best metaphors leave a lasting impression. This, I believe, is sufficient proof of their efficacy.

The authors of Beyond Bitcoin, for example, refer to Layer 1 technology as "base plumbing" (now whenever I see "Layer 1" I think pipes and drains). In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes a ceiling as a “frosted wedding cake” (now whenever I see an ornate ceiling I imagine it's edible). Or how about Winston Churchill’s description of a sea battle:

If you want to make a true picture in your mind of a battle between two great modern iron-clad ships, you must not think of it as if it were two men in armor striking at each other with heavy swords. It is more like a battle between two egg-shells, striking each other with hammers.

Think in metaphor, write in metaphor—and watch your words take flight.