 This is a distinctively modern development. Ancient philosophers and rhetoricians viewed metaphor as a temporary self-explanatory change in the use we make of a general or singular term, typically a noun or noun phrase. When we resort to metaphor, a term that routinely stands for one thing or kind is made to stand for another, suitably related thing or kind instead, and this change in what the term stands for occurs on the fly, without warning and without special explanation. The effect is to transfer the term in question from its accustomed place in our verbal classificatory scheme to some other unaccustomed place for special temporary expressive purposes. For Aristotle, writing in the middle of the fourth century BCE, the figurative redeployment of term counts as a metaphor regardless of precisely how the term’s usual referent and its special temporary referent are related (Poetics 21 1457b ff. See also Rhetoric 3.2 1404b-1505b, 3.4 1406b–1407a, 3.10–11 1410b–1413b). By the time Quintilian and Cicero come along, metaphor is one of many distinct recognized figures of speech, and a self-explanatory terminological transfer counts as metaphorical only if it is based on a real or supposed analogy or likeness between the regular referent and the special temporary one. The change matters less than one might expect, since although Aristotle recognized four different kinds of metaphor, he regarded the analogy-based kind as the most interesting by far and devoted the bulk of his discussion to it.