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simile (language)

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Simile (language)


Figure of speech that in English uses the conjunctions like and as to express the comparison between two different things (‘run like the devil’; ‘as deaf as a post’). It is sometimes confused with metaphor. The simile makes an explicit comparison (suggesting that something is like something else), while a metaphor's comparison is implicit (suggesting that something is something else).

Not all comparisons using the words like or as are similes; for example, ‘the city of Bristol is like Boston’ literally compares two cities. However, in ‘the city of Bristol is like a fine old ship’ or ‘the city of Boston is like a fine old lady’, more imaginative comparisons are made, not city with city, but city with ship or lady. These analogical links between less obvious contexts are similes.

© Research Machines plc 2008. All rights reserved. Helicon Publishing is a division of Research Machines plc.


 
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deus ex machina
alliteration
ambiguity
anachronism
analogy
anecdote
anthropomorphism
anticlimax
antithesis
antonym
assonance
bathos
black humour
climax
comic relief
conceit
connotation
couplet
device
double entendre
emotive language
euphemism
figure of speech
grotesque (literature)
half-rhyme
hyperbole
imagery
irony
lampoon
literary criticism
metaphor
metonymy
onomatopoeia
oxymoron
parody
pastiche
personification
pun
rhetoric
rhyme
rhythm (poetry)
satire
simile (language)
symbol (general)
synecdoche
synonymy
synthesis (literature)
tautology
zeugma

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