Attributes Are Entities

Transfers

Abstract attributes — courage, beauty, intelligence, patience — are understood as independent things that exist in the world. They can be possessed, given, taken away, found, and lost. “She has a lot of patience.” “He lost his nerve.” “They found courage in each other.” The metaphor converts properties (which logically inhere in subjects) into objects (which can exist and move independently).

Key structural parallels:

• Possession as having an attribute — “She has courage.” “He has intelligence.” The metaphor maps the having-relationship between a person and a physical object onto the relationship between a person and a quality. This is so fundamental that the verb “have” in English is ambiguous between physical possession and attribute ascription, and most speakers never notice the difference.
• Acquisition as gaining an attribute — “She gained confidence.” “He acquired wisdom.” “They developed patience.” The metaphor frames psychological change as obtaining a new object, complete with the implication that the object exists somewhere before you acquire it and that the acquisition is a discrete event.
• Loss as losing an attribute — “He lost his temper.” “She lost her nerve.” “They lost hope.” The attribute departs like a physical object leaving your possession. Critically, loss implies the attribute still exists somewhere — you just no longer have it. This shapes how we think about recovery: you can “get your confidence back” as if it were a misplaced wallet.
• Transfer between people — “She gave me strength.” “He inspired courage in them.” “The speech filled them with hope.” Attributes move from person to person like physical gifts. The metaphor makes emotional influence tangible and transactional.
• Quantity — because entities can be measured, attributes gain quantity. “A lot of patience.” “Not enough courage.” “Too much pride.” The metaphor converts qualitative states into quantifiable substances, enabling comparison and degree language.

Limits

• Attributes are not separable from their bearers — you cannot put “patience” on a shelf while you go be impatient for an hour. The metaphor implies that attributes exist independently of the people who have them, but patience is a pattern of behavior, not a detachable thing. This reification can lead to confused reasoning: “Where does courage come from?” becomes a sensible question under the metaphor but is incoherent if courage is understood as a behavioral disposition.
• Transfer does not deplete the source — when you “give someone courage,” you do not have less courage afterward. Physical objects are zero-sum; attributes are not. The metaphor systematically misleads about the economics of psychological influence.
• Quantification is spurious — “a lot of patience” borrows the precision of physical measurement for something that has no units. The metaphor creates an illusion of comparability: “She has more courage than he does” sounds precise but resists any operationalization.
• The metaphor essentializes — treating attributes as entities encourages thinking of them as fixed possessions (“she’s a courageous person”) rather than as context-dependent behaviors (“she acted courageously in that situation”). The entity metaphor favors trait psychology over situationist accounts and can reinforce stereotyping.

Expressions

• “She has a lot of patience” — attribute as possessed quantity
• “He lost his nerve” — attribute as mislaid object
• “They found strength in each other” — attribute as discovered object
• “She gave me hope” — attribute as transferable gift
• “He lacks imagination” — absence of attribute as missing possession
• “Gather your courage” — attribute as scattered objects to collect
• “She’s full of energy” — person as container of attribute-substance
• “He was stripped of his dignity” — attribute removal as physical seizure
• “She radiates confidence” — attribute emission as physical radiation
• “Where does talent come from?” — attribute origin as spatial question

Origin Story

ATTRIBUTES ARE ENTITIES is listed in the Master Metaphor List (Lakoff, Espenson & Schwartz, 1991) and represents one of the foundational ontological metaphors in Lakoff and Johnson’s framework. In Metaphors We Live By (1980), they argue that ontological metaphors — treating abstractions as entities or substances — are among the most basic cognitive operations, preceding and enabling more specific metaphorical mappings. The metaphor is closely related to PROPERTIES ARE POSSESSIONS (another entry in the event structure system) but is broader: it covers not just the possession relation but the entire range of interactions one can have with a physical object.

References

• Lakoff, G., Espenson, J. & Schwartz, A. Master Metaphor List (1991)
• Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Metaphors We Live By (1980), Chapter 6 (“Ontological Metaphors”)
• Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Philosophy in the Flesh (1999)