Metaphors for Power: Height, Grip, Helm, Strings and Thrones

On this page15 sections

1. Quick picker
2. Power is up: height and rank
3. Power is a hand: grip, fist and thumb
4. Power is steering: helms, reins and wheels
5. Power behind the scenes: strings and shadows
6. Power as a throne, a crown or a seat
7. Power as size, weight and force
8. Power as money and cards
9. Power as a drug or an appetite
10. Metaphors for losing power
11. Famous metaphors for power
12. Choosing the right one
13. Common mistakes
14. Practice
15. Quick answers

The most common metaphors for power picture it as height (at the top, rise to power, fall from power), as a grip (an iron grip, a stranglehold, under someone’s thumb), as steering (at the helm, hold the reins, in the driver’s seat), as strings (pull the strings, a puppet ruler), as a throne or crown (the power behind the throne), as weight (a heavyweight, throw your weight around) and as a drug (drunk on power, power-hungry). Most everyday talk about power uses one of these images, often without noticing.

This page groups the metaphors by image, explains what each one says about power (they are not neutral: a “grip” sounds different from “the helm”), and shows them in real sentences. Further down you will find famous metaphors for power from literature and politics, metaphors for losing power, mistakes people often make, and a short practice set. For the difference between a metaphor and a simile, see figurative language.

Quick picker

Power is up: height and rank

The deepest metaphor for power in English is that having power is being up and lacking it is being down. The linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson made this point in Metaphors We Live By (1980), using everyday examples such as “He’s at the height of his power”, “He is under my control” and “He fell from power”. We use the pattern so constantly that it does not feel like a metaphor at all.

• At the top / top dog. “After the merger she was top dog in the new company.” Top dog is informal and a little combative.
• The top brass. The most senior officers or managers. “The top brass have flown in for the launch.” Informal.
• The upper echelons. The highest levels of an organisation or society. More formal: “Women are still rare in the upper echelons of the judiciary.”
• Rise to power / climb the ladder. Gain authority step by step. “His rise to power took less than five years.” The corporate ladder is the business version.
• Look down on / talk down to. Treat people as lower. These show the metaphor at work in ordinary verbs.
• The pecking order. The ranking of who has power over whom. It comes from the hierarchy hens set up by pecking each other, described by the Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe in the early twentieth century. “New interns quickly learn the pecking order.”
• Low man on the totem pole. American and informal: the person with the least status. Some readers dislike it because it misreads real totem poles, where the lowest figure is not the least important.
• Above the law. So powerful that rules do not seem to apply. “No minister is above the law.”

Power is a hand: grip, fist and thumb

These picture power as physical holding. The tighter the grip, the harsher the power sounds.

• A firm hand / take a firm hand. Strict but not necessarily cruel. “The school needed a firm hand after years of drift.”
• An iron grip / an iron fist. Total and harsh control. “The general ruled the province with an iron fist.” Grip stresses holding on; fist stresses force.
• An iron fist in a velvet glove. Hard power behind a gentle, polite manner. “The chairman’s courtesy was an iron fist in a velvet glove.” The saying is often credited to Napoleon, but the attribution is not well supported.
• A stranglehold. Control so complete that it chokes competition. “Two firms have a stranglehold on the market.” From a wrestling hold.
• Under someone’s thumb. Completely controlled by them. “He’s been under his father’s thumb all his life.”
• In the palm of your hand. Completely under your influence. “By the second chorus she had the audience in the palm of her hand.” Often positive, for a performer.
• Tighten (or loosen) your grip. Increase or relax control. “The regime tightened its grip on the press.”

Power is steering: helms, reins and wheels

These are the most respectable metaphors for power, because they frame it as responsibility for direction rather than force. Leaders tend to describe themselves this way. More of them are on metaphors for leadership.

• At the helm. In charge, like a ship’s captain at the wheel. “With a new editor at the helm, the paper changed its tone.”
• Hold the reins / the reins of power. Control, from driving horses. “She has held the reins of the family business since 1998.” To keep a tight rein on someone is to control them strictly; to give someone free rein is to let them do what they like.
• In the driver’s seat. In control of a situation. “With two offers on the table, you’re in the driver’s seat.”
• Call the shots. Make the decisions. “Officially he’s the manager, but his deputy calls the shots.”
• Steer. Guide policy or a group: “steer the country through a crisis”.
• Pull the levers of power. Operate the machinery of government. The image is of a control room. “Voters want to know who is really pulling the levers.”

Truman’s desk sign, “The buck stops here”, belongs nearby: power as the place where responsibility finally lands. It comes from “passing the buck”, an old poker term for handing on the turn to deal.

Power behind the scenes: strings and shadows

• Pull the strings. Control events secretly. “The founder retired years ago, but he still pulls the strings.” It can also mean using influence to get a favour: “She pulled a few strings to get him an interview.”
• A puppet / a puppet government / a puppet master. A ruler controlled by someone else, and the one who controls them.
• The power behind the throne. The person who really holds power while someone else has the title. “Everyone knew the chief of staff was the power behind the throne.”
• A kingmaker. Someone who decides who gets power without taking it themselves. The original was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known as “Warwick the Kingmaker” for his role in the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses.
• An éminence grise (grey eminence). A powerful adviser who works in the background. The first was Father Joseph, the grey-robed Capuchin friar who advised Cardinal Richelieu.
• In the corridors of power. Where high-level decisions are made, out of public view. C. P. Snow made the phrase familiar and used it as the title of his 1964 novel.

Power as a throne, a crown or a seat

• The seat of power. The place or office from which power is exercised. “Westminster has been the seat of power for centuries.”
• Dethrone / crown. Remove a champion or leader; make someone the winner. “The upstart dethroned the defending champion in three sets.”
• Heir apparent. The person expected to take over. “The finance director is the heir apparent.”
• King of the hill / king of the castle. The current leader in a contest, from children’s games where one player holds the top and others try to push them off.
• “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2. The crown as the burden and worry of power. People still quote it about presidents and CEOs.

Power as size, weight and force

• A heavyweight. A person or organisation with a great deal of influence, from boxing. “a political heavyweight”. Its opposite, a lightweight, is an insult.
• Throw your weight around. Use your power in a bullying way. “The new director threw his weight around in his first week.”
• Carry weight. Be influential. “Her opinion carries a lot of weight with the board.”
• Clout. Influence. The word’s older meaning is a heavy blow. “a firm with real clout in Washington”.
• Flex your muscles. Show your power, often as a warning. “The union flexed its muscles with a one-day strike.”
• A juggernaut. A huge force that crushes whatever is in its way. The word comes from Jagannath, the Hindu deity whose enormous temple cart is pulled through the streets of Puri. “The streaming giant has become a juggernaut.”
• The 800-pound gorilla. American and informal: the biggest player, who can do as it likes. “In search, Google is the 800-pound gorilla.”
• A big stick. The threat of force. Theodore Roosevelt’s motto “Speak softly and carry a big stick” turned it into a foreign-policy phrase.
• Steamroll. Force a plan through, flattening opposition. “They steamrolled the changes through the committee.”

Power as money and cards

These frame power as something you can save, spend, trade or play. They are common in political commentary. For money’s own metaphors, see metaphors for money.

• Political capital. Goodwill and influence a leader can “spend” to pass difficult measures. “He spent all his political capital on the health bill.”
• A bargaining chip. Something you can trade in a negotiation, from gambling chips.
• Hold all the cards / play your trump card. Have every advantage; use your strongest advantage at the decisive moment.
• A power broker. Someone who arranges deals and decides who gets influence.
• A power vacuum. A situation where no one is in control, so others rush to fill it. From physics: air rushes into an empty space.
• A power grab. A sudden attempt to seize control.
• Hold the purse strings. Control the money, and so the decisions.

Power as a drug or an appetite

• Drunk on power / intoxicated by power. Behaving recklessly because of power. “By his second term he was drunk on power.”
• Power-hungry. Always wanting more control. “a power-hungry councillor”.
• A taste of power. A first experience that leaves someone wanting more.
• Power goes to your head. Makes you arrogant. “Don’t let the promotion go to your head.”

Lord Acton’s famous line, written in an 1887 letter, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, is a statement rather than a metaphor, but it is the idea most of these images express.

Metaphors for losing power

• A fall from power / a fall from grace. The “power is up” metaphor in reverse.
• Toppled / ousted / unseated. Pushed off a high place or a seat. “The prime minister was toppled by her own party.”
• A lame duck. An official in the final period of office, after a successor has been chosen, with little real power left. In eighteenth-century London it first meant a stockbroker who could not pay his debts.
• Lose your grip. Lose control, or lose your hold on reality.
• Clip someone’s wings. Reduce their freedom or power. “The new rules clipped the regulator’s wings.”
• The writing on the wall. A sign that power is about to end. It comes from the Book of Daniel, where a hand writes a message on King Belshazzar’s wall foretelling the fall of his kingdom.

Famous metaphors for power

• “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Mao Zedong, 1938. Power as a plant with a gun for its soil: a blunt claim that force comes first.
• Ozymandias. Shelley’s 1818 sonnet describes a broken statue of a boastful king lying in the empty desert. It is the classic extended image of power that seemed permanent and was not.
• The crown in Henry IV, Part 2. Shakespeare treats the crown as a weight that steals the king’s sleep (“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”).
• Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes, in his 1651 book of that name, pictured the state as a giant sea monster made of its citizens, powerful enough to keep the peace.

Choosing the right one

Power metaphors carry a judgement. “At the helm” and “steer” sound responsible; “an iron fist” and “a stranglehold” sound oppressive; “pull the strings” sounds sly; “drunk on power” is an accusation. Before you use one, ask what you want the reader to feel about the person who holds the power.

If you write your own, choose an image from the world you are describing. A football club “holding the whistle”, a newspaper’s owner “holding the red pen” or a school head who “keeps the master key” will say more than another “iron fist”. Those three are made-up examples to show the method, not set phrases.

For the related idea of physical or personal power, see metaphors for strength.

Common mistakes

Practice

A. Which image does each metaphor use: height, hand, steering, strings, weight, or money?

1. The family still holds the reins of the company.
2. He has real clout in the party.
3. She spent her political capital on the reform.
4. Everyone knew who was pulling the strings.
5. He was the top dog in the office.
6. The dictator kept the press under his thumb.

B. Choose the better metaphor for the tone.

7. A friendly profile of a new head teacher: (at the helm / an iron fist)
8. A critical article about a corrupt mayor: (drunk on power / in the driver’s seat)
9. An official about to leave office, with no influence left: (a heavyweight / a lame duck)

Answers

1 steering · 2 weight (a blow) · 3 money · 4 strings · 5 height · 6 hand · 7 at the helm · 8 drunk on power · 9 a lame duck

Quick answers

What is a metaphor for power?

“At the top”, “an iron grip”, “at the helm”, “pull the strings” and “a heavyweight” are among the most common. Each shows power through a different image: height, holding, steering, puppetry and weight.

What is a metaphor for a powerful person?

A heavyweight, a juggernaut, a titan, a force of nature, top dog or a power broker, depending on whether you mean influence, unstoppable force or behind-the-scenes control.

What is a metaphor for abuse of power?

“Throw your weight around”, “an iron fist”, “a stranglehold”, “drunk on power” and “a power grab”.

Is “power is like a drug” a metaphor?

With like it is a simile. “Power is a drug” or “drunk on power” is the metaphor.

What is a metaphor for power in a poem?

Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is the best-known: a shattered statue in the desert stands for power that thought it would last forever.

See also: idioms for leadership.