Idiom/saying/word request for "inappropriately complex analogy"

Question

I'm looking for an adjective, saying or idiom for an analogy which makes the things even harder to grasp, that was supposed to make things easier to understand.

Examples:

• A guy makes an analogy to express that playing violin and driving a car is similar, when he teaches driving cars. But since very limited people know how to play violin, it does not make things easier.

• A guy teaches culinary on Youtube. But he rather than he explains the basics of culinary (say boiling water), he says 'oh this process is similar to gamma radiation'.

It is not important if the analogy is good or bad. Just it makes things harder to understand.

Answer 1

I don't know if there is a single idiom that captures everything you're describing, but I might use a trio of expressions to get the full point across:

That's not a fitting analogy; you're making this harder than it has to be. Boiling water pales in comparison with gamma radiation.

That's not an apt analogy; you're making this overly complex. Driving a car is nothing compared to playing the violin.

Analogies are often described using words like fitting, appropriate, apt, or accurate (here's an Ngram).

Wiktionary defines pale in comparison as “to appear unimportant in relation to something else.”

Answer 2

I would say the person is "muddying the waters" by using the wrong type of analogy. They are making things less clear.

Answer 3

I like many of the suggestions that have been made, and cannot think of a idiom or saying that precisely encompasses the meaning you are asking about. How about needlessly/overly abstruse analogy?

Answer 4

You could use the idiom to miss the mark to describe these analogies. Miss the mark is defined as:

To fail to reach the result that was intended -- This manifesto missed the mark and they failed to enlist people's attention as they had hoped.

Also, what you describe is the definition of complicated or overcomplicated.

Complicate is defined as:

to make something more difficult to do, deal with, or understand

So, you could say something like:

Your analogies are unnecessarily complicated and miss the mark.

Answer 5

You might call it a byzantine analogy. While the word itself doesn't have any particular connotations of inadvertent obfuscation, it would be understood to mean "an overly-complicated analogy".

From wiktionary: Byzantine adj. 1. Overly complex or intricate.

Answer 6

You could use go around (all) the houses

"That analogy goes around all the houses, couldn't you just keep it simple!"

BBC website exampling usage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/thai/features/the-english-we-speak/ep-150421

Answer 7

'Next to impossible' is a commonly used phrase, which means things are hard, but not impossible to grasp or learn.

Answer 8

The traditional term for this mistake is obscurum per obscurius, that is '[to explain something relatively] obscure by [something even] more obscure'. That term is, however, not confined to explanations by analogy; it can be applied to (attempted) explanations of any kind.

Even though the term is perfectly apt for what the OP has in mind, its usefulness is limited by the fact that very few people are nowadays exposed to it in their education. For a typical present-day English-speaking audience, labelling something as obscurum per obscurius would itself be an instance of obscurum per obscurius.

Answer 9

Catalogy! Ok hear me out: The Greek prefix "cata" (meaning down) is the opposite of "ana" (meaning up). Advantages? Firstly it sounds a bit like catastrophe, giving a faux-onamatapeic resonance. But more importantly, the fact that if you used the word catalogy, it would bring any conversation grinding to a halt, as the user tried in vain to explain it's purpose, makes it a gloriously fitting term for the context, no?