metaphor
[met-uh-fawr, -fer]
- a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”Compare mixed metaphor, simile(def 1).
- something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.
Show More
Origin of metaphor
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
symbol, image, analogy, similitude, emblem, personification, allegory, hope, metonymy, tropeExamples from the Web for metaphor
Contemporary Examples
The scene must be a metaphor for sex, because really who does any of this?
Lepore has a different, though still linear, metaphor for the history of feminism: “a river, wending.”
Wonder Woman’s Creation Story Is Wilder Than You Could Ever ImagineTom Arnold-Forster
November 3, 2014
To wring all that can be wrung from metaphor, note what our elected and appointed officials are not dressed as.
Kirkman does dip into metaphor here, as telephones are a symbol of our connection with one another.
The Walking Dead’s Luke Skywalker: Rick Grimes Is the Perfect Modern-Day Mythical HeroRegina Lizik
October 28, 2014
The Walking Dead, like the monomyth, is a metaphor for human nature and conviction of the spirit.
The Walking Dead’s Luke Skywalker: Rick Grimes Is the Perfect Modern-Day Mythical HeroRegina Lizik
October 28, 2014
Historical Examples
The metaphor might be meaningless; but it struck him it was strong.
Now, it is this sense of the solidity of things that can only be uttered by the metaphor of eating.
Alarms and DiscursionsG. K. Chesterton
But the metaphor is more striking as phrase-making than as criticism.
Shelley, Godwin and Their CircleH. N. Brailsford
Instinctively, metaphor sprang to the lips of Ichabod Maurice.
A Breath of Prairie and other storiesWill Lillibridge
Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
NatureRalph Waldo Emerson
metaphor
- a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denote in order to imply a resemblance, for example he is a lion in battleCompare simile
Show More
Word Origin
C16: from Latin, from Greek metaphora, from metapherein to transfer, from meta- + pherein to bear
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for metaphor
n.
late 15c., from Middle French metaphore (Old French metafore, 13c.), and directly from Latin metaphora, from Greek metaphora "a transfer," especially of the sense of one word to a different word, literally "a carrying over," from metapherein "transfer, carry over; change, alter; to use a word in a strange sense," from meta- "over, across" (see meta-) + pherein "to carry, bear" (see infer).
Show More
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
metaphor
The comparison of one thing to another without the use of like or as: “A man is but a weak reed”; “The road was a ribbon of moonlight.” Metaphors are common in literature and expansive speech. (Compare simile.)
Show More
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.