Cart, horse.

[alierak]

At some point the shopping cart metaphor for online purchasing breaks down, and I have to wonder why some sites use it. I occasionally go browsing the web for objects of beauty (no, not porn), to convince myself that not everything is junk, and run across stuff like this. $82,000.00 (Add to Cart). Right. Like it would fit

Comments

[yakshaver]

Ah, the joys of philology. Over time, what was originally an apt metaphor will turn into a word or phrase whose original significance is lost to us in daily use --- consider the phrase "turn into" earlier in this sentence: its use to mean 'make one thing from another' probably has its roots somewhere in the mists of time as a metaphor for what a potter does with a wheel and clay, or perhaps for what a carpenter does with wood and a lathe. (Other words or phrases in that sentence also clearly started life a metaphors, but would usually go unnoticed as such today; e.g. "roots", "mists of time".) This process is one of the most important means (perhaps the primary one) by which the expressive power of language grows.