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metaphor

By Richard Nordquist, About.com

Definition:

A figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something 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. Adjective: metaphorical.

Related terms: catachresis, conceptual metaphor, conventional metaphor, creative metaphor, dead metaphor, extended metaphor, grammatical metaphor, mixed metaphor, visual metaphor.

See also:

Etymology:

From the Greek, "carrying over"

Examples and Observations:

  • "Between the lower east side tenements
    the sky is a snotty handkerchief."
    (Marge Piercy, "The Butt of Winter")


  • "The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner."
    (Cynthia Ozick, "Rosa")


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


  • "Men's words are bullets, that their enemies take up and make use of against them."
    (George Savile, Maxims of State)


  • "A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind."
    (William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors)


  • "The rain came down in long knitting needles."
    (Enid Bagnold, National Velvet)


  • Lenny: Hey, maybe there is no cabin. Maybe it's one of them metaphorical things.
    Carl: Oh yeah, yeah. Like maybe the cabin is the place inside each of us, created by our goodwill and teamwork.
    Lenny: Nah, they said there would be sandwiches.
    ("Mountain of Madness," The Simpsons)


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


  • "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)
Pronunciation: MET-ah-for
Also Known As: lexical metaphor

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