1. Home
  2. Education
  3. Grammar & Composition

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. (In cognitive linguistics, the terms target and source are roughly equivalent to tenor and vehicle.) Adjective: metaphorical.

Types of Metaphors: absolute, complex, conceptual, conventional, creative, dead, extended, grammatical, mixed, primary, root, submerged, therapeutic, visual

See also:

  • What Is a Metaphor?
  • Time Metaphors
  • 13 Types of Metaphors
  • Etymology:

    From the Greek, "carrying over"

    Examples:

    • "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."
      (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.
      (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
Explore Grammar & Composition
About.com Special Features

Tips that will help finance your education, excel in the classroom, and advance your career. More >

Being well prepared is the first step; here are more essential suggestions. More >

  1. Home
  2. Education
  3. Grammar & Composition
  4. Grammar & Rhetoric Glossary
  5. Main Clause - Oxymoron
  6. metaphor - definition and examples of metaphors - figures of speech

©2009 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.