Definition:
A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common. See also: Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Our Writing.
Etymology:
From Latin, "likeness" or "comparison"Examples:
- "He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow."
(George Eliot, Adam Bede) - "The harpsichord sounds like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof."
(Sir Thomas Beecham) - "Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity."
(Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary) - "Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along the way are all marked 'Progress.'"
(Lord Dunsany) - "Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep."
(Carl Sandburg) - "He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food."
(Raymond Chandler) - "She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat."
(James Joyce, "The Boarding House") - "Good coffee is like friendship: rich and warm and strong."
(slogan of Pan-American Coffee Bureau, 1961) - "Life is rather like a tin of sardines: we're all of us looking for the key."
(Alan Bennett) - "My memory is proglottidean, like the tapeworm, but unlike the tapeworm it has no head, it wanders in a maze, and any point may be the beginning or the end of its journey."
(Umberto Eco, "The Gorge") - "Brady Quinn will take being compared with NFL quarterback Matt Leinart any day of the week--unless that day is Saturday, April 29, 2006, when Leinart slid into the draft like a bald tire on black ice."
(Rob Oller, "A Quandary for Quinn," The Columbus Dispatch, February 25, 2007)
Pronunciation: SIM-i-lee
