Animal epithet
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An animal epithet is a name used to label a person or group, by association with some perceived quality of an animal. Epithets may be formulated as similes, explicitly comparing people with the named
Leopard's Head box, 19th century. Wood with metal tags, used to hold kola nuts in the royal court of Benin, where leopard was an epithet for a powerful person.
Odysseus, slaughtering Penelope's suitors on his return home at the end of the Odyssey, is compared by Homer to a lion. Bell-krater, c. 330 BC
The painter William Hogarth's name is a metonym for a swineherd. Self-portrait with his dog, 1745
War hawk
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In politics, the terms war hawk and hawk describe a person who favours starting armed conflicts or escalating ongoing ones instead of attempting to solve problems through diplomacy or other nonviolent
Animal epithet
…35% as black as a raven; to jabber like a bunch of blackbirds 65% to parrot; cuckoo; aquiline; to swan about; bird-brained; the vultures are circling; (warmaking) hawk versus (peacemaking) dove Insects 7% 81% as busy as a bee; to sting like a hornet 19% louse; cockroach; (inconstant) butterfly; (unfaithful…
Henry Clay, a "guiding spirit" of the 19th-century war hawks
John C. Calhoun, another Southern politician famous for being a war hawk