Sadock (1998:44) has claimed that “most lexical items prove to be dead metaphors that were alive and kicking at some time in the past”. In this paper his assumption is being tested as fourteen words are investigated. Seven of these words are specific and seven are non-specific. The seven specific words refer to “receptacles”, while the non-specific words denote “things contained”. With the help of the Oxford English Dictionary and some other sources the study tries to reveal the original meanings of the words, in order to look for metaphorical aspects. The original meanings are then compared with the present ones, to see if they differ. Then the two groups of words are compared. The investigation attempts to show if the selected words once were active metaphors and whether they could be called dead metaphors today.