Figurative verb family
- Id
- figurative-verb-family
- Status
- Active
- Severity
- low
- Detection
- deterministic
- Evidence grade
- community-observed
- Languages
- en
- Added
- 2026-08-15
- Updated
- 2026-08-17
Currently signals low-effort writing.
What it is
A small set of figurative verbs recycled as the default way to say that something matters. Carries real weight, casts a long shadow, strikes a chord, sits at the heart of and lends itself to are live metaphors in the hands of a feature writer and dead ones everywhere else. The evidence is two independent linters and nothing measured, which is what the community-observed grade records.
Why it reads as machine-made
The set is small and the substitution is frictionless. Any of these verbs fits any subject, so the choice between them carries no information about the subject.
Specimens
The pricing change carries real weight, and the reasoning behind it sits at the heart of how we think about value. A price is a statement about who a product is for, and statements like that are hard to take back. Getting one wrong casts a long shadow over everything that follows it. We would rather be clear now than clever later.
We raised the price of an agent from 29 to 39 euros in June and kept the old price for everyone who had already paid. Two customers left. Both said the same thing, that they used one agent and were being priced as though they used four.
Figures in this repair are invented for the specimen. The repair states the change, the exception, and the cost of it.
How it is detected
- Pattern
- \bcarries\s+(?:real|significant|extra|more)\s+weight\b|\bcasts?\s+a\s+long\s+shadow\b|\bstrikes?\s+a\s+chord\b|\bsits\s+at\s+the\s+heart\s+of\b|\blends\s+itself\s+(?:well\s+)?to\b
- Flags
- gi
- Scope
- sentence
Who writes this way legitimately
Sports writing, feature journalism and music and theatre criticism use these verbs as working metaphors, and a critic writing that a performance struck a chord is describing an audience reaction they watched happen. Casts a long shadow is standard in history and biography for an influence that outlasts a person. Lends itself to is ordinary technical English for a material or method that suits a purpose. The pattern requires the fixed collocations, so a crane that carries weight up to nine tonnes and a guitarist playing a chord both escape it. A reviewer should try the substitution test: if any other verb in the family would fit the sentence equally well, the verb is carrying no meaning, and if only one fits, it is.
Model attribution
Undocumented. The family comes from two rule sets built by practitioners, and no measurement exists to attribute it to anything.
Status history
| Date | Status | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-15 | Active | Active, on thin evidence. Two independent rule sets carry the family and no published study measures it, so the entry ships at low severity with the grade stated. It is listed because the substitution test is easy to run and useful, not because anyone has counted it. |
Sources
- 01vale-ai-tells, 111 machine-checkable rulescommunityaccessed 2026-08-14
- 02slop-lint, social-reply-register moldscommunityaccessed 2026-08-14
CC BY 4.0 / The AI Tells Index, feedsquad.com/ai-tells