A Furthermorph is a word or phrase that refers to aspects of the natural world on Earth and beyond that are not faunamorphs or floramorphs.
Many furthermorphs are living creatures, and others are inanimate objects and phenomena. These are terms that express our fascination with fungi, minerals, weather, celestial bodies, and other natural phenomena that exist beyond the boundaries of flora and fauna.
Furthermorphs remind us that humans don’t just identify with what breathes or blooms —we also see ourselves in the slime, the stones, the stars, and the storms.
The Furthermorph icon was designed by Mariana Fosatti at Artica Online.
There are myriad furthermorphs (neither fauna nor flora) that are living creatures. There are many other furthermorphs that are associated with inanimate objects and phenomena, especially the Gaiamorphs and Astromorphs.
Definition:
Furthermorphic (adj.) describing words or expressions that attribute human qualities or actions to natural phenomena outside the animal or plant realms: fungi, weather, minerals, cosmic bodies, and more.
Furthermorphs speak to interdependence and connection
Take the humble mushroom, mold, or lichen — organisms that blur the lines between plant and something “other.” They creep, spread, cluster, and decay — and so do the metaphors we’ve built around them. We speak of Spore new ideas, Mushrooming problems, mold of behavior, A culture gone to mold, Fungal growth of corruption, A slimy situation, Spreading like mold, Fester with resentment, Rot at the core, Mycelial networks of influence, Spores of creativity, A decomposing institution. These are furthermorphs — they carry our sense of growth, decay, renewal, and transformation from one world into another. They remind us that our language, like a forest floor, is alive with hidden threads of meaning — spreading quietly beneath the surface.
“The quietude and outer simplicity of the lichens hides the complexity of their inner lives. Lichens are amalgams of two creatures: a fungus and either an alga or a bacterium. The fungus spreads the strands of its body over the ground and provides a welcoming bed. The alga or bacterium nestles inside these strands and uses the sun’s energy to assemble sugar and other nutritious molecules. As in any marriage, both partners are changed by their union.”
– Maria Popova, The Marginalian: Lichens
Take the skies! Ideas in flight.
Beyond the forest floor lies the sky — where furthermorphs take to the heavens. Here, we find expressions that draw on weather, light, air, and celestial bodies to reflect human moods and behavior.
We say: Stormy temper, Thunderous applause, Lightning-fast reflexes, Radiate warmth, Glow with pride, Cloud over with sadness, Under the weather, Walking on air, Bask in the spotlight, Throw shade, Silver lining, Dark cloud of doubt, Clear skies ahead, Full of hot air, A tempest in a teapot, Shooting star, Over the moon, Starstruck, Moonstruck, Lost in the fog, Frozen out.
Each phrase connects human emotion and experience to climate, atmosphere, and cosmic motion, making the intangible tangible.
“As above, so below.” The sky, too, becomes our mirror.
Stones, Crystals, and Grounding Forces
Furthermorphs don’t stop at the skies. They dig deep… literally. Our connection to the earth beneath our feet is written into our language of solidity, clarity, and endurance.
We speak of: bedrock principles, being between a rock and a hard place, crystallizing an idea, delivering a polished performance, knowing a gem of a person, finding a diamond in the rough, breaking the ice, staying grounded despite Earth-shattering news, and so forth…
These geological metaphors show our kinship not with what grows, but with what endures and only changes over eons. They remind us that even our hardest emotions, our most stable beliefs, and our deepest memories are mineral in nature — compressed, layered, and multifaceted.
The Universe Within
In the end, furthermorphs show how deeply the non-living and the unseen inhabit our speech.
We compare our tempers to weather, our resilience to rock, our dreams to stars, and our creative bursts to the sudden growth of mushrooms after rain.
Whether it’s the way a rumor spores out, a friendship crystallizes, or a plan evaporates, our language tells the story of a species that finds itself reflected in everything — from raindrops to constellations.
We are, it seems, a people of metaphors.
And every furthermorph is one more way we say:
“We are not separate from nature. We are made of it.”