Learn English – Can you speak metaphorically if you’re using similes

In this case, dry is not the opposite of wet, but it means bare, and lacking adornment, such as a dry report.

Etymonline, the online etymology dictionary, indicates the word has been used to describe comedy for more than 500 years!

dry O.E. dryge, from P.Gmc. *draugiz, from PIE *dreug-. Meaning "barren" is mid-14c. Of humor or jests, early 15c. (implied in dryly); as "uninteresting, tedious" from 1620s.

As for antonyms, instead of a dry lecture, you might sit through a lively one. When applied to jokes, a joke might be farcical, or whimsical; a comedy routine might be laced with slapstick. One website I found listed 20 distinct forms of humor; others in that list which seem "opposite" of dry include hyperbolic, sophomoric, screwball, but probably not mordant.

No, There is no imperative to create a new construct here.

When a metaphor ''loses its metaphorical properties'' due to the demise of colloquial meaning of its components, where the meaning remains we call this an idiom. Where the meaning is lost entirely, we call it a dead metaphor. Both of these descriptions are accurate, depending on the time, place and persons from and to which the phrase is spoken or written.

Also I believe the following phrasing manipulates the outcome of the discussion:

'high point [e.g., of a career]'

The above definition includes his very own implied assumption of "high" being strong or successful! It would be far more accurate to simply use the following phrasing in our definition of the zenith of a career:

'strongest or most successful point [e.g., of a career]'

I believe this is simply a discussion of the difference between metaphor and idiom.

In the case of the phrase "Falling in Love" we're really looking at an idiom. Whether or not a person understands this phrase is a combination of 1) whether they've heard that particular idiom, and 2) whether idiom exists in their native paradigm at all (e.g. certain languages have no idioms, and the concept of idiom can be a challenging new one).

However, this is completely separate from the fact that a limber mind can interpret meaning in places where it has not been literally defined. We call this metaphor.