Metaphoric Meanings of Words Denoting Weather in English and Vietnamese
From the earliest times on, mankind was studying the winds, the rains, the clouds and
other conditions relating to their surroundings. During cultivation process, people keep learning
and creating with the aim of mastering the rules of nature, particularly of weather so that they
could conquer and make it service their demands. Therefore, it is impossible to deny that we
live on weather, experience the weather and are affected by it. As a result, a rough set of rules
about weather have been passed down over the generations. Some of these observations have
settled down in the forms of proverbs, idioms, poetry and in daily language.
Obviously, words denoting weather are used not only to denote our experiences about
weather conditions, but also to express our feelings, our love to nature, to people and our
expressions about things happening around us.
However, in the 21 st century, human beings are confronting with many serious
problems, one of which is the climate change. Together with this tendency in the environment,
there have seen a lot of changes in the meanings of words denoting weather. Not only are they
restricted in showing the rules of nature, gradually, they are widely used to describe any events
happening daily. Let us have some examples.
(1) The storm has so far destroyed nearly 1,300 houses and damaged and inundated
83,000 others. About 800 classrooms, 100 public buildings, including health centres, have been
destroyed or damaged by the storm. [38a]
In this example, storm is used to refer to very bad weather with heavy rain, strong
winds, the coming floods everywhere, etc. People are going to suffer from collapse, loss,
homelessness, or even death which might be brought back during and after the storm.
However, we do not have the same picture in our mind if we hear:
(2) Summer travel: Price storm make tours more expensive [39]
(3) Hot money fuels inflation in China [40]
Do the word storm in (2) and hot in (3) refer to weather in general? It is impossible.
In these examples, we do not see the rain, strong winds or high temperature. Still, we suffer a
lot from them.
In fact, during communication, speakers want to express what they mean and listeners
may get what the speakers say. In fact, it is not always easy to capture thoroughly and exactly
what is said and written because one word itself may bring with it a lot of variants besides its
root. In other words, one word used in different contexts has different meanings.
As a language learner, we have noticed that the words storm in (2), hot in (3) have had a lot
of transfers in their root meanings. They are not only used to inform of weather as usual, but
also used for various fields in our lives such as economics, politics, environment, human
feelings, emotions, etc. Especially, people are more and more familiar with the appearance of
the weather words on mass media such as television, newspapers, magazines, etc.