How do we determine the intended meaning of a metaphor?

When Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "all men are poets at heart," he might have been exposing a deeper truth than he realized. For even in the coldest, most calculating of minds there are indeed wisps of pure poetry. The metaphor, metaphore, or metaphora is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denotes one kind of object or idea used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between …

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