What is a body-heat-for-love metonymy?

A conventional metonymy in which reference to the physiological response of increased body temperature is used to stand for love.

Here are some examples in English:

• I felt hot all over when I saw her.
• You really have the hots for her, don't you?
• It was a torrid relationship.

• What is a physiological metonymy for love?

Kovecses 1986

• Concept module: body-heat-for-love metonymy
• In modular book: Metonymies in English, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H. Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
• In bookshelf: Lexicon

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 2 July 1998

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