It might be a standard modifier, but you don't go around every menu pressing and depressing option to see the alternatives. I mean, you can, but to use your me

It might be a standard modifier, but you don't go around every menu pressing and depressing option to see the alternatives. I mean, you can, but to use your metaphor, it's a leaky way of exposing available options. All options should be shown when you click on a menu, without having to press extra keys. "Cut" greys out a file in the Windows File Explorer, showing that it could be cut n' pasted. Cut n' paste is a leaky metaphor for "Move this from here to there" anyway, which is what people want to do 80% of the time when they use this function. People can deal with leaky metaphors that follow the same vector as the original.