But only metaphorically is America a family, its members bound by tendrils of intimacy and affection.

WSJ: Pilon: Graduates, Your Ambition Is the Problem

The music died when the first results came into Romney HQ in Boston - not metaphorically, but literally, as the jazz band that had been serenading Republicans stopped playing.

BBC: Right direction for Romney?

But that was only metaphorically.

ECONOMIST: Anatomy as art

Not kind of about him, not metaphorically about him, but actually about him.

NEWYORKER: The TV

And the Sharia's call for "jihad" - loosely interpreted as Holy War, but which can also be used metaphorically to mean conversion of the unfaithful - was stressed.

BBC: The many faces of Sharia

Speaking metaphorically, Ausra business development chief Thomas Bartolomei says, "We have irons in the fire" but no signed deals yet.

FORBES: A solar project's funding freezes up.