Whats an example of a metaphor?

Question

Whats an example of a metaphor?

Answer 1

A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things. Here's a good website to look at:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/g...

Answer 2

An example is saying "Men are blinded by her beauty." They aren't literally blinded. The author is just making a dramatic point of her beauty.

Answer 3

Its raining cats and dogs is one example of a metaphor

Answer 4

Similes compare, metaphors substitute. "He was a tower of strength."  "Richard the Lionheart." "drowning in money." None of these examples are literally true, of course, but they convey the alternative image more immediately than similies do.

Answer 5

World of the Body: metaphor

Ordinary language is saturated with corporeal metaphors. We frequently speak of ‘the lip of a cup’, and ‘the legs of a table’, and use expressions like ‘the walls have ears’, ‘the interviewer kept me on my toes’, and ‘let's get to the heart of the matter’. Not only are many of our metaphorical expressions rooted in the body and our experiences of it, but metaphors, in turn, significantly shape our cultural perceptions of the body.

Definitions and interpretations

From the Greek word ‘metaphora’ meaning ‘transference’, a metaphor has generally been understood as a figurative expression which interprets a thing or action through an implied comparison with something else. Aristotle, who is usually considered the originator of ‘comparison’ theories of metaphor, described metaphors in the Rhetoric as elliptical similes — comparisons of ‘things that are related but not obviously so’ without using ‘like’ or ‘as’. According to Aristotle, the best or ‘most well liked’ type of metaphor transfers its meaning from one subject or ‘register’ to another through the principle of analogy. As Aristotle observes in the Poetics, these metaphors often depend on logical relationships between multiple terms. The metaphor ‘old age is the evening of life’, for instance, relies on the relation between a set of terms describing day and another set describing age.

Bodily metaphors

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, scholars have shown that many of our metaphorical expressions (along with much of thought itself) develop from our perceptions and experiences of the body. In her 1956 volume on reading poetry, Modern English and American Poetry, Margaret Schlauch suggested that one of the most basic types of metaphorical transfer is the naming of a new object through its resemblance to part of the body. Citing such examples as ‘headland’, ‘foothill’, ‘the face of a watch’, and ‘blind alleys’, Schlauch offered a comparison view of corporeal metaphor in which meaning is transferred from bodily parts and sensuous experiences to other objects on the basis of similarity.

Literary Dictionary: metaphor

metaphor, the most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two. In metaphor, this resemblance is assumed as an imaginary identity rather than directly stated as a comparison: referring to a man as that pig, or saying he is a pig is metaphorical, whereas he is like a pig is a simile. Metaphors may also appear as verbs (a talent may blossom) or as adjectives (a novice may be green), or in longer idiomatic phrases, e.g. to throw the baby out with the bath‐water. The use of metaphor to create new combinations of ideas is a major feature of poetry, although it is quite possible to write poems without metaphors. Much of our everyday language is also made up of metaphorical words and phrases that pass unnoticed as ‘dead’ metaphors, like the branch of an organization. A mixed metaphor is one in which the combination of qualities suggested is illogical or ridiculous (see also catachresis), usually as a result of trying to apply two metaphors to one thing: those vipers stabbed us in the back.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: metaphor

Figure of speech in which a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in "the ship plows the seas" or "a volley of oaths"). A metaphor is an implied comparison (as in "a marble brow"), in contrast to the explicit comparison of the simile ("a brow white as marble"). Metaphor is common at all levels of language and is fundamental in poetry, in which its varied functions range from merely noting a likeness to serving as a central concept and controlling image.

Columbia Encyclopedia: metaphor

[Gr.,=transfer], in rhetoric, a figure of speech in which one class of things is referred to as if it belonged to another class. Whereas a simile states that A is like B, a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A. Some metaphors are explicit, like Shakespeare's line from As You Like It: “All the world's a stage.” A metaphor can also be implicit, as in Shakespeare's Sonnet LXXIII, where old age is indicated by a description of autumn:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

[U+00A0][U+00A0]Where yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

[U+00A0][U+00A0]Bare ruined choirs, where once the sweet birds sang.

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Answer 6

its just like a similie only without the words "like" or "as". so if you were going to say "her skin was so soft it was like velvet." you would instead write "her skin was so soft it was velvet."

Answer 7

A metaphor compares two things that are alike. It's different from a simile in that it doesn't use the words "like" or "as" If you were to compare someones eating habits to a pig using a simile, you'd say "You eat like a pig" but if you were to use a metaphor, you would say something like "You are a pig" or "You're a pig when it comes to eating"

Hope this helps!

Answer 8

A metaphor is an analogy, but my metametaphore aside.  Her hair was red, a blazing inferno.  If you were to add like or as, as in, "Her hair was like a burning inferno it become a simile.  A metaphor is simply when you compare on thing to another.