For some theorists, implicit and imaginative metaphor are linked like a principal figure and its necessary sign: attributing a peculiar feature of the comparison source to the subject reveals the unexpressed comparison.
Another theory grants the imagined form its own conceptual status and may classify the applied word as a verbal metaphor. Definitions from different theories cannot simply be superimposed to produce a contradiction without first stating their premises.
The point at issue is how imagining claws for death relates to the suppressed predator comparison.