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How does a metaphor differ from a simile?
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figure of speech
Front cover of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women.
Both metaphor and simile are figures of speech used to compare two ostensibly dissimilar phenomena, but they differ in their construction and directness.12
- Simile: This is a comparison explicitly announced by the use of connecting words such as "like" or "as". For example, "He is as slow as molasses" or "We were packed in the room like sardines" are similes because they clearly signal the comparison being made.132
- Metaphor: This is an implied resemblance where one thing is spoken of as if it were another. Derived from the Greek word metapherein ("to transfer"), a metaphor functions by substituting one term for another to create a direct identification. For example, while "my love is like a red, red rose" is a simile, "love is a rose" is a metaphor.13
In the study of rhetoric, both are classified as tropesâfigures that affect the texture of discourseârather than structural schemes. While similes maintain a distance between the two compared objects, metaphors create a more immediate, transformative effect.21