simile
- 1. SIMILE
- 2. Mean: A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like" or "as" – also, but less commonly, "if", or "than". A simile differs from a metaphor in that the latter compares two unlike things by saying that the one thing is the other thing.
- 3. SIMILE Types In Using Using Without literature 'like' 'as' 'like' or 'as'
- 4. IN LITERATURE "Curley was flopping like a fish on a line." "The very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric." "Why, man, they both bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." "But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile." Charles Dickens, in the opening to A Christmas Carol.
- 5. USING “like” A simile can explicitly provide the basis of a comparison or leave this basis implicit. In the implicit case the simile leaves the audience to determine for themselves which features of the target are being predicated. It may be a type of sentence that uses 'as' or 'like' to connect the words being compared. She is like a candy so sweet. He is like a refiner's fire. Her eyes twinkled like stars. He fights like a lion. He runs like a cheetah. She is cute like a rose.
- 6. USING “as” The use of 'as' makes the simile more explicit. She walks as gracefully as a cat. He was as hungry as a lion. He was as mean as a bull. She wasn't as smart as Vanessa. That spider was as fat as an elephant.
- 7. Without 'like' or 'as' Sometimes similes are submerged, used without using comparative words ('Like' or 'As'). "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate:" William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 "I'm happier than a tornado in a trailer park!" Mater, Cars "How this Herculean Roman does become / The carriage of his chafe." William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra' Act I, sc. 3.