RESEARCHERS at the University of Glasgow are beginning to scent the sweet smell of success.

For among the fruits of their labours is a Metaphor Map, an academic resource containing a mountain of metaphorical connections.

A team at the university's School of Critical Studies has just completed a three-year-long project which traces metaphor over the history of the English language - and has found that the use of that figure of speech goes back at least 13 centuries.

The Metaphor Map is based on the data contained in the Historical Thesaurus of English, which was compiled between 1966 and 2009, and the Oxford English Dictionary.

The researchers, who have been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, have been able to identify more than 10,000 metaphorical connections between different subjects and to track how language use has changed over the centuries. They contend that metaphorical thinking underlies the way we make sense of the world conceptually. Examples are metaphors that employ evocations of light or darkness. Intelligent people are often described as bright or brilliant; conversely, others can be dim or unilluminated.

The assignment has clearly not been a breeze. However, it is music to the wordsmith's ear. If nothing else, it certainly provides food for thought.