Comment by HarHarVeryFunny

There are certainly a lot of analogies to be found in language - it would be interesting to know how much of this is cultural (e.g. business use of sports analogies) vs universal across cultures. Your "spiraling" example reminds me of one I recently came across as a roman coin collector - the origin of the word cataracts, and also portcullis (latin: cataracta) as being analogical to a waterfall (whose greek name gives us cataract), and the notion of something coming crashing down (even if only an eye covering).

Perhaps the common occurrence of analogies in language is because language is distinct from the things it is referencing, so some degree of abstraction is unavoidable?