From Richard Nordquist,
Your Guide to Grammar & Composition.
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Definition:

An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common. A metaphor expresses the unfamiliar (the tenor) in terms of the familiar (the vehicle). When Neil Young sings, "Love is a rose," "rose" is the vehicle for "love," the tenor. Related terms include mixed metaphor and catachresis. See also:

• What Is a Metaphor?
• Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Our Writing
• The Metaphors of Dr. Gregory House
• Susan Orlean's Extended Metaphor: "Super-Duper"

Etymology:

From the Greek, "carrying over"

Examples and Observations:

• "The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
  Petals on a wet black bough."
  (Ezra Pound, "In a Station at the Metro")



• "My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill."
  (William Sharp, "The Lonely Hunter")



• "Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food."
  (Austin O'Malley)



• "Words are bullets, and should be used sparingly, aimed toward a target."
  (Army Colonel Dick Hallock)



• "It would be more illuminating . . . to say that the metaphor creates the similarity than to say that it formulates some similarity antecedently existing."
  (Max Black, Models and Metaphors, 1962)



• "Language is a road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going."
  (Rita Mae Brown)



• "The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."
  (John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961)



• "[W]hen I see the first faint shadow of orthodoxy sweep across the sky, feel the first cold whiff of its blinding fog steal in from the sea, I tremble all over, as though I had just seen an eagle go by, carrying a baby."
  (E. B. White, "Bedfellows")



• "Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times."
  (Rita Rudner)

Pronunciation: MET-ah-for