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metaphor Definition

meta·phor (met′ə fôr′)

noun

a figure of speech containing an implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another (Ex.: the curtain of night, “all the world's a stage”)

Etymology: Fr métaphore < L metaphora < Gr < metapherein, to carry over < meta, over (see meta-) + pherein, to bear

metaphor Related Forms
met′a·phor′ic adjective or met′a·phor′i·cal met′a·phor′i·cally adverb
metaphor Synonyms

metaphor

n.

trope, simile, implied comparison, figure of speech; see comparison 2.

mix metaphors

be inconsistent, garble, talk illogically; see confuse.

metaphor Usage Examples

Converse of object

  • borrow: Metaphors borrowed from computing were used to understand life forms as biochemical machines whose efficiency coefficients could be raised by precise genetic reprogramming.
  • embody: This article describes a more structured approach to working with embodied metaphors.
  • mix: Certainly, to mix metaphors, a spell has been broken.
  • invoke: The typewriter metaphor frequently invoked for explaining word processors is far more limited in scope.
  • employ: Throughout the film, Makhmalbaf employs metaphors which, when examined away from the film, seem crass and obvious.
  • interpret: These so-called prophecies rely heavily on interpreting metaphors and numerical clues contained in the cryptic verses and then ascribing these to major events.

Adjective modifier

  • apt: That such a resource has been so scandalously untapped is unfortunately an apt metaphor for the plight of my constituents in other respects.
  • conceptual: I discuss various special cases of this conceptual metaphor.
  • redemptive: The redemptive metaphor is like a magic arrow; it does all the healing work once discovered.
  • spatial: Your obstinate persistence in using spatial metaphors is actually turning your thinking inside out!
  • extended: Capulet also notices Juliet's tears but uses an extended metaphor.
  • poetic: In the final stanza this changes, tho we do not find conventional poetic metaphor here, either.

Modifies a noun

  • landscape: Symbolic Modeling works with maps, which it calls the ' metaphor landscape ' .

Noun used with modifier

  • acquisition: LOM's concept of semantics is based on epistemological and ontological assumptions comparable to those of the acquisition metaphor of learning.
  • interface: Consequently, the virtual city is being used as an interface metaphor to information and services on the WWW.
  • root: The three root metaphors are: brand as differentiating mark, brand as person and brand as asset.

Possessives

  • client: This inspired him to create Clean Language, a way of asking questions which preserves the logic of clients ' metaphors.

Preposition: of

  • journey: Team: Donuts Game title: Tracks Complex learning journeys are undertaken using the metaphor of a train journey.

Preposition: for

  • mind: The metaphor for the mind became to a large extent hydraulic.
  • life: Cycling is an excellent metaphor for life itself, in my opinion.
metaphor Quotes

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

—Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)

   One thing that literature would be greatly the better for Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.

—Nash, (Frederic) Ogden

Subjects choose me† I lie in wait like a leopard on a branch-strained metaphor.

—Moore, Marianne Craig

Cricket remains for me the game of games, the sanspareil, the great metaphor, the best marriage ever devisedof mind and body† For meit remainstheProust of pastimes, the subtlest and most poetic, the most past- and-present; whose beauty can lie equally in days, in a whole, or in one tiny phrase, a blinding split second.

—Fowles,John Robert

I love metaphor the way some people love junk food.

—Gass,William H(oward)

I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.

—Malamud, Bernard

Man be my metaphor.

—Thomas, Dylan Marlais

No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock. Palmerston

—Paley, Grace ne¤  e  Goodside

Science is all metaphor.

—Leary,Timothy Francis

öthrough metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones.

—Williams,William Carlos

He understood†Walt Whitman, who laid end to end words never seen in each other's company before outside of a dictionary, and Herman Melville who split the atom of the traditional novel in the effort to make whaling a universal metaphor.

—Lodge, David John