THE POWDER KEG — ABOUT THE SUCCESS STORY OF A THING-AESTHETIC METAPHOR

Abstract

Although the powder keg is a historical object like armour and cannon, it occurs as a word outside historical texts in numerous phrasemes with increasing frequency. This is based on the special metaphoric potential of the powder keg. It is a thing-aesthetic metaphor of time that describes a complex experience of time. In the case of the exploding powder keg, this primarily concerns speed, but also end and beginning as well as time limit. This complexity in the experience of time makes the metaphor particularly interesting for its application to the social field of politics: attention is drawn to the danger and an appeal is made to take action against it, since one’s own destruction may be imminent. The chronology of the emergence of the idioms shows that this implication occurs at a very early stage and is currently crucial not only in the German language.

Keywords:

phraseology, metaphorics, diachrony, etymology of idioms, comparative linguistics, language contact