The past few years have brought increasing interest in lexical universals. Much of this interest has been stimulated by Berlin and Kay's (1969) widely cited study of uniformities in color classification, and by Berlin's (1972Berlin's ( , 1976Berlin, Breedlove, andRaven 1973, 1974) proposals of general principles of classification and nomenclature in folk biology. Numerous studies of color and folk biology, and of other domains, document additional regularities (for extensive citation, see Witkowski and Brown 1978a). Among the latter, the domain of human body part terms has proved rich in cross-language regularities.Lexical universals described for the domain of human body parts have primarily involved nomenclatural uniformities. Studies by Brown (1976), Swanson and Witkowski (1977), and Andersen (19781, for example, all identify body parts (e.g., head, hand, foot, eye, ear) that are regularly labeled by simple lexemes, and other parts (e.g., fingernail, toenail, eyelid, earlobe) that are regularly labeled by complex lexemes. The latter studies and several others (e.g., Ellen 1977; Liston 1972; McClure 1975; Stark 1969) have also been concerned with patterns in the manner in which parts of the body are conceptually related t o one another. In addition, attention has been given t o the association between the general perception of space and shape and the naming of human body parts (e.g., Friedrich 1969aFriedrich , 1969b Stross 1976).The present paper focuses on the semantic content of figurative names for certain body parts. More specifically, it deals with cross-language regularities in the use of figurative language in body part labeling. Evidence is assembled showing that certain metaphors for body parts occur with high frequencies in languages of the world. Their rates of occurrence This paper assembles cross-language evidence documenting several high frequency, figurative labels for body parts: e.g., "child o f the eye," for pupil of the eye; "mother of the hand," for thumb; "mouse of the arm," for biceps. These figurative expressions occur in languages at frequencies that greatly exceed chance. In addition, their distribution is discontinuous across genetic and geographic language boundaries, indicating frequent independent invention. Repeated invention of similar figurative expressions is due to universal naming tendencies. These tendencies relate to underlying marking principles, intralanguage lexical constraints, physical worldlperceptual givens, and language context and use considerations. greatly exceed chance, and they are not continuous in their distribution across genetic and geographic language boundaries. Consequently, it can be inferred that they have been invented over and over again in human languages.Figurative language encompasses all areas of speech and behavior relating to the nonliteral, metaphorical, and rhetorical. Anthropologists in particular have recently been taking note of the pervasive role of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and the like in the daily lives of people and are beginn...