From the article:

We use words as tools to get things done; and to get things done, we improvise, making use of whatever materials are ready to hand. If you want to whack a piece of sheet metal to bend it, and don’t know or care what the “right” tool is (if there even is one), you might take a quick look around the garage, grab a large screwdriver at the “wrong” end, and hit the target with its hard rubber handle. A hand tool may have one or two standard uses; some less common but pretty obvious ones; and unusual, creative ones. But these are not clearly distinct categories of usage.

Words go the same way. Almost any word can be used to mean almost anything, in some context. You could play this as a challenge game… How about “The eggplant is a straw hat, and the spinach is yelling about politics”?

We’re in the kitchen of a vegetarian restaurant. A table’s entrees are ready, and the server who took the order is explaining to the one who will deliver the meal which diner gets which dish. One customer’s flamboyant straw hat is a salient, unambiguously identifying feature; you can see it all the way across the room. The other probably needs to turn up a hearing aid; you can hear their opinions about cultural appropriation all the way across the room.