(uncountable,rhetoric) The use of a word, phrase, concept, or set of concepts to refer to something other than its literal meaning, invoking an implicit similarity between the thing described and what is denoted by the word, etc., that is used.
Coordinate term:simile(when the similarity is made explicit by the wordslike oras)
2013, Eileen Cornell Way,Knowledge Representation and Metaphor,page157:
The next group of computational approaches tometaphor assume thatmetaphor is basically a hidden analogy.
(countable,rhetoric) A word or phrase used in such implied comparison.
1835, L[arret] Langley, “[The Seven Tropes.] Metaphor.”, inA Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric,[…], Doncaster, South Yorkshire:[…] C. White,[…],→OCLC,page 3:
AMetaphor, in place of proper words, Resemblance puts; and dress to speech affords.
1874, John Seely Hart,First Lessons in Composition,page92:
AMetaphor may be changed into a Simile, and also into plain language, containing neithermetaphor nor simile. Thus: Metaphor. — Idleness is the rust of the soul. Simile. — As rust is to iron, so is idleness to the soul, taking away its strength and power of resistance. Plain. — Idleness takes away from the soul its strength and power of resistance.
What then is truth? A movable host ofmetaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seems to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they aremetaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
2025 May 23, Charlie Warzel, “What Are People Still Doing on X?”, inThe Atlantic[1]:
To torture themetaphor, though, they’re sitting at a table outside the Nazi bar; their friends are there, they’re having a good time, maybe they hear a slur emanate from the window from time to time.
