Joint Incoherence

Some metaphors don't go well together.

In addition to the Good is Up metaphor, there's also Unknown Is Up / Known Is Down.

* The verdict is still *up in the air*. * It's *settled*, then.

Lakoff and Johnson posit this has an experiential basis, just a different one.

> This metaphor has an experiential basis very much like that of Understanding Is Grasping, as in "I couldn't *grasp* his explanation." With physical objects, if you can grasp something and hold it in your hands, you can look it over carefully and get a reasonably good understanding of it It's easier to grasp something and look at it carefully if it's on the ground in a fixed location than if it's floating through the air (like a leaf or a piece of paper). Thus Unknown Is Up; Known Is Down is coherent with Understanding is Grasping.

It seems unlikely you'd use both Good Is Up and Unknown Is Up near each other.

* The verdict's still *up in the air*, so things are *looking up*. ("...things are looking good" would be more natural.

However, consider:

* Things are *looking up* for my client, because the verdict has been *up in the air* for four solid days of jury deliberation.

--- But why is "the government should manage its budget the way households do" at all coherent with "the government should be run like a household"?