Transferred Epithet

The beauty of language is that it allows you to break rules. You are not sentenced for doing so. Then there are figures of speech. Quite interesting. We use metaphors to make it clearer. But a metaphor sounds like you are confused about the names of things. Clarity from confusion, order out of chaos. By definition metaphor is "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable" (Wikipedia). So anything is a metaphor since none of the nouns or verbs have any god given connection to what they refer to. Most of them are generalizations by default. For example, the word 'cow' has a meaning for me which is not understood by you since our life experiences are way too different

Transferred Epithet is another figure of speech which we often use without realizing it. It is the clever art of purposefully misplacing the adjective. In this very sentence the word 'clever' is misplaces since cleverness is not in art but in the person doing it. 'Weary journey' and 'sleepless night' are also good examples. A clever one is: The transferred teacher told me what a smart epithet is.