The AHRC-funded Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus project
aims to provide data on the extent and development of metaphor across the
history of English. It uses the full database of the Historical Thesaurus of
English, which extensively categorises and classifies the recorded
vocabulary of the English language from Old English to the present day. By
using this database to map semantic categories onto one another, and thus
showing lexical overlap in different conceptual fields, we aim in the project
to provide results which will demonstrate the widespread, systematic and
far-reaching impact of metaphor on English.<p></p>
This paper outlines the digital and linguistic methodologies used by the
project, and presents a case study of the semantic categories of wealth and
poverty, demonstrating the metaphorical links between these categories and
the rest of the language. In addition, we discuss the nature of lexical overlap
as we use it in the project, and discuss both the quantitative and diachronic
dimensions of the data we are manipulating and their implications for
projects of this type.<p></p>
