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"metaphor"
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:
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
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