grammarsluts Q'n'F'n'A: anything further, Father?

Q.  What is the difference between farther and further?

A.  Both are comparatives of far, but farther refers to literal distance and further to metaphorical distance.  E.g., "If you find yourself at the CVS, you've gone too far, and you should turn around and head in the other direction instead of going any farther," but "If you find yourself knocking over a CVS for oxycontin, you've gone too far, and you should seek professional help instead of going any further."

Q.  So should I say that we'll figure something out "a little farther down the road" or "a little further down the road"?

A.  OK, sometimes it gets a little complicated.  A funny question has arisen: is your use of the word far literal in the metaphor?—by which I mean: although the distance down the road is metaphorical, are the length of the road and your progress along it (being parts of the metaphor) literal in context?*

    Think of an epic simile: if I say that the effect of adrenaline in my body was comparable to the way "a shark, sensing blood in the water, begins to swim faster, its fin slicing through the water" (or some shit), then the swimming and the slicing are parts of the metaphor but not metaphors in themselves—indeed, they probably don't have a 1:1 correspondence to anything in "the real world" (the metaphor's tenor) but rather are, rather, within the context of the metaphor itself, quite literal.  To put it another way, one would not say "a metaphorical bird in the metaphorical hand is worth two in the metaphorical bush," for roughly the same reason that it would be foolish to interrupt a discussion of Hamlet to object that, no, Polonius isn't killed by Hamlet, but rather the fictional character Polonius is "killed" by the fictional character Hamlet, fictionally—which not only goes but in fact goes much better without saying.  A parable might be more to the point: in the parable of the talents, it would be incorrect to say that that one servant buries a metaphorical talent: the talent surely is a metaphor, but then so are the man and his choice to bury the talent, and to focus on one aspect as metaphorical is like mixing metaphors, not just unnecessary but confusing and almost certainly confused.

    So it seems to me that you should say "a little farther down the road": even though it's a metaphor, you're talking about literal distance in the context of that metaphor.  One does not go metaphorically down a literal road, and in the context of the metaphor (which is rather like the "reality" of a fictional world), the road is real.  We can of course imagine metaphors within metaphors within parables within fictional tales...but then, sadly, our head a splode.

* Bonus question / semi-analogous concept:  Should I give the cookies to (a) whoever wants them, or (b) whomever wants them?  The answer, which surprises many educated folks, is (a), that you should give them to whoever wants them, because the object of the preposition to is not in fact who- or whomever but rather who- or whomever wants it.  In other words, whoever wants it is an object; whoever itself is a subject.