| Library / English Dictionary |
METAPHOR
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("metaphor" is a kind of...):
figure; figure of speech; image; trope (language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "metaphor"):
dead metaphor; frozen metaphor (a metaphor that has occurred so often that it has become a new meaning of the expression (e.g., 'he is a snake' may once have been a metaphor but after years of use it has died and become a new sense of the word 'snake'))
mixed metaphor (a combination of two or more metaphors that together produce a ridiculous effect)
synesthetic metaphor (a metaphor that exploits a similarity between experiences in different sense modalities)
Derivation:
metaphoric; metaphorical (expressing one thing in terms normally denoting another)
