Comparison of Properties Is Comparison of Possessions
metaphor
Source: Economics → Intellectual Inquiry
Categories: cognitive-sciencelinguistics
From: Master Metaphor List
Transfers
When we compare people’s abstract qualities, we talk as if we are comparing their inventories. She has more patience than he does. He has less experience. They are equally endowed with talent. The metaphor takes the concrete activity of comparing what people own — counting, measuring, and ranking possessions — and maps it onto the abstract activity of comparing personal qualities, abilities, and attributes.
This metaphor builds on PROPERTIES ARE POSSESSIONS (see related entry) by extending the possession frame from attribution to comparison. Once properties are conceptualized as things you have, it becomes natural to ask who has more of them.
Key structural parallels:
- Quantity as amount possessed — comparing qualities becomes comparing quantities of stuff. She has more courage. He has less imagination. The metaphor makes abstract qualities countable and measurable, as if patience came in bushels and talent in ounces.
- Advantage as wealth — having more of a desirable quality is like being richer. She is richly talented. He is endowed with intelligence. The person with more of the quality is better off, borrowing directly from economic advantage.
- Deficiency as poverty — having less of a quality is like being poor. He is impoverished in imagination. She lacks the resources to cope. The metaphor makes personal shortcomings feel like economic deprivation — a deficit that could, in principle, be remedied by acquisition.
- Equality as equal shares — when two people are alike in a quality, they are equally endowed, they have the same amount of experience, they are matched in ability. Parity is structured as equal distribution, as if qualities were divided from a common stock.
- Non-evaluative comparison — the Master Metaphor List specifies this as a non-evaluative metaphor, meaning it structures how we describe comparative properties, not how we judge them as good or bad. “She has more patience” is a comparison, not a compliment. The evaluative layer comes from other metaphors (GOOD IS UP, MORE IS BETTER).
Limits
- Properties are not zero-sum — possessions are finite: if I give you my money, I have less. But if one person has more courage, that does not mean someone else has less. The possession frame imports a scarcity model that does not apply to personal qualities. The metaphor makes it feel as though talent and virtue exist in fixed quantities that must be distributed.
- The metaphor assumes commensurability — you can compare two bank accounts because they contain the same thing (money). But comparing one person’s patience with another’s assumes that patience is a uniform substance that both possess in different quantities. In reality, one person’s patience may be a practiced discipline, while another’s is temperamental indifference. The metaphor flattens qualitative differences into quantitative ones.
- Comparison of possessions is objective; comparison of properties is not — you can count someone’s money without ambiguity. But who has more creativity? The possession frame makes the comparison feel like an empirical question with a definite answer, when it is often a matter of framing and values.
- The metaphor encourages ranking over understanding — once qualities are possessions to be counted, comparison naturally produces hierarchies. Who has the most talent? Who has the least experience? The possession frame turns every quality into a leaderboard, discouraging the question of whether comparison is even meaningful in a given case.
- Gaining and losing are mismodeled — acquiring possessions is a discrete event (you have it or you don’t). But gaining confidence or losing patience are gradual, contextual, and reversible processes that the possession-comparison frame treats as inventory changes.
Expressions
- “She has more patience than he does” — comparative quality as comparative inventory
- “He has less experience than the other candidates” — career history as a quantity possessed
- “They are equally talented” — parity as equal endowment
- “She’s better endowed with common sense” — quality advantage as wealth
- “He lacks the imagination that she has in abundance” — deficiency and surplus as poverty and wealth
- “Who has more to offer?” — personal qualities as a portfolio of holdings
- “She has twice his determination” — multiplicative comparison borrowed from quantity
- “He doesn’t have as much going for him” — overall quality as overall possessions
- “They matched each other in intelligence” — intellectual parity as equal holdings
Origin Story
The Master Metaphor List (Lakoff, Espenson & Schwartz 1991) catalogs COMPARISON OF PROPERTIES IS COMPARISON OF POSSESSIONS as a non-evaluative conceptual metaphor. The “non-evaluative” qualifier distinguishes it from metaphors that rank properties as good or bad (like MORE IS BETTER or GOOD IS UP). This metaphor provides only the structural scaffolding for comparison — the framework of having more or less of something — without specifying whether more is desirable. It builds directly on the more fundamental PROPERTIES ARE POSSESSIONS metaphor, extending it from simple attribution (“she has courage”) to comparative attribution (“she has more courage than he does”). The metaphor is deeply embedded in English grammar: the comparative and superlative constructions (“more X,” “the most X”) presuppose that abstract qualities are quantifiable substances that can be measured and ranked.
References
- Lakoff, G., Espenson, J. & Schwartz, A. Master Metaphor List (1991)
- Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Metaphors We Live By (1980), Chapters 6 and 25
- Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), Chapter 11
Related Entries
Structural Neighbors
Entries from different domains that share structural shape. Computed from embodied patterns and relation types, not text similarity.
- Comparison of Properties Is Comparison of Physical Properties (embodied-experience/metaphor)
- Character Is Conduct (theatrical-directing/mental-model)
- Cleverness Is Quickness (movement/metaphor)
- Inversion (geometry/mental-model)
- AI Is a Mirror (vision/metaphor)
- C Casting (manufacturing/metaphor)
- The Magic If (theatrical-directing/mental-model)
- Fine-Tuning Is Specialization (music/metaphor)
Structural Tags
Patterns: scalecontainermatching
Relations: translateselect
Structure: transformation Level: primitive
Contributors: agent:metaphorex-miner