Metaphor as a Tool

Cricket writers will often, of course (pace the late Neville Cardus), be more sportsmen than fine-tuned linguists. I enjoyed a paragraph I read recently that commented on "the tail's inability to handle the tension".  Handling anything with one's tail might be awkward, though monkeys might more or less manage. Two lines later, the author wrote of their "inability to handle the pressure - they have been prickly all summer . . . they need to 'pick themselves up' and re-focus".

The team referred to could neither 'handle' 'tension' nor 'pressure'.  The term 'handle is just a metaphor: we all know what it means. But tension and pressure, even in metaphor, are abstract and opposites.  Well, who cares about mere metaphors ?  When you are so prickly you can't handle a tension, clearly what you need is to to pick yourself up (handling carefully and avoiding the prickles) and re-focus.

Another commentator wrote of Australia's "panoply of off-field disciplinary issues".  'Issue' is a very popular term at present, meaning anything from problem to complaint, from matter to argument*.  Such 'issues' have to be (metaphorically) handled, of course. But they shouldn't be grouped in 'panoplies'.  A panoply is, and always has been until now, a 'full set of military armour and weapons'**. A plumber's bag of tools might metaphorically be described as a 'panoply' (unless he has left one of them behind);  and I suppose you might metaphorically describe a skilful author's bag of tricks - with metaphor one of the set - as a panoply.

If you are an amateur writer*** with a limited vocabulary (not the full panoply, as it were), write simply, and don't try to be too clever with exotic words.  Otherwise you are very likely to put your metaphorical foot in it.

*  And of course it has other meanings, in journalism, banking and genealogy, for instance.

**  'Panoply' is composed of two elements derived from ancient Greek: pas and pan and panta are forms of the Greek  adjective meaning 'all';  hopla (singular hoplon) means weapons or implements or tools.

***  There are many who earn a living, or a part-living, from writing who are not very knowledgeable about the English language. It is a good thing that qualifications for doctors are more rigorous than those for authors.

PS   Part of the professional writer's panoply is of course the awareness of when to compromise on matters of grammar and syntax.  This is a matter of his/her personal taste. You can only break 'rules' if you know what the rules are, and why. And you should only break them deliberately, for a purpose.  But in speeech, as opposed to writing, almost anything goes so long as it works.