How does the phrase “the mouth of a river” use metaphor?

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Louisa May Alcott: Little Women — figure of speech Front cover of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel *Little Women*.

In the context of rhetoric, a metaphor is a figure of speech that creates a comparison between two ostensibly dissimilar phenomena. The phrase "the mouth of a river" functions as a metaphor by applying a term associated with human anatomy—the mouth—to a geographical feature where a river enters the ocean.12

By using this term, the speaker attributes a human or organic quality to a nonhuman object, effectively visualizing the river’s end as an opening or an entry point similar to how a mouth functions for a living being. This is a classic example of a trope, a textural effect that helps conceptualize the physical world by mapping familiar biological structures onto natural landscapes.1