Therianthropism, as described in my chapter on the rhetoric of animality, appears only to operate successfully when used as a means of discrediting or demeaning other people. In showing them partly in animal form (or with animal characteristics or attributes), therianthropism does pictorial violence - symbolic violence - to the image of one's rivals or opponents.

The streams that run south and east from the mountains to the coast are short and rapid torrents after a storm, but at other times dwindle to feeble trickles of mud.

She was a strangely thin girl in a dark pinafore, with a pink handkerchief tied over her hair.

All these compounds were bacteriostatic, affecting the bacterial metabolism and preventing its multiplication in the host, thereby permitting natural body defences to succeed against the invader.