A successful distinction between literal and figurative speech must separate established technical use, intentional figurative use, and accidental misuse. Assignment, domain of discourse, contextual indication, and semantic relation all contribute to that separation.
The divisions explicit/implicit, realizable/imagined, and single-expression/illustrative are related but do not ask the same classificatory question. With their criteria distinguished, even “the claws of death” admits careful analysis rather than a merely verbal label.
The continuation examines further objections to imaginative metaphor and the predication of attributes associated with the unspoken comparison source.