What does water mean to us

Abstract This study employs a corpus-based approach to examine the metaphorical and metonymic uses of water in Chinese and English idioms. The findings indicate that both languages share similar target domains of water metaphors, such as power, thought and emotions , based on shared bodily experiences and the universal attributes of water. However, the conceptual correspondences differ within shared water metaphors (e.g., a human being is water ) and metonymies (e.g., part for whole ). Additionally, certain target domains of water metaphors are culture-specific, such as music is water in Chinese and holy spirit is water in English. These differences can be explained by the sociocultural factors. Statistical analysis shows that water metaphors are more culturally influenced, leading to greater cross-linguistic variability, while water metonymies remain more stable across languages. Overall, this study highlights the interplay between universal cognition and culture-specific conceptualization in language.