metaphor

Pluralmetaphors

Formsmetaphors, metaphoring, metaphored

1. 1
   nounrhetoriccountable

   A word or phrase used to describe one thing as another, implying a likeness between them rather than stating it directly.

   Calling memory a fragile thread is a metaphor that captures how easily the past slips away.

   Her speech leaned on military metaphors, framing every problem as a battle to be won.

   Similarimage, trope, figure

   Note

   Here the word counts: a metaphor is one figure you can quote or extend. John Seely Hart's First Lessons in Composition (1874) shows the line between it and a simile. "Idleness is the rust of the soul" asserts the likeness, while "as rust is to iron, so is idleness to the soul" spells it out. A writer who pushes a figure too far may admit it with "to torture the metaphor," as Charlie Warzel does in The Atlantic.

2. 2
   nounrhetoricuncountable

   The use of words or ideas to refer to something beyond their literal meaning, implying a similarity between what is described and what the words actually denote.

   Skilled storytellers use metaphor to make abstract ideas feel concrete and immediate.

   Everyday speech is shot through with metaphor, often without speakers noticing it.

   Similarimagery, symbolism, figuration

   Note

   Taken as a mass noun, metaphor names the practice rather than any one instance of it, so it goes without an article: a writer uses metaphor. The word holds its own definition. Greek metaphorá comes from metaphérō, "I transfer," from metá "across" and phérō "I bear," and a metaphor carries a word across to what it does not literally name. Eileen Cornell Way's Knowledge Representation and Metaphor (2013) calls it basically a hidden analogy.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The use of an everyday object or concept to represent part of how a computer works, helping users carry out tasks.

   The folder metaphor on most systems mirrors how people once filed paper documents.

   Early software borrowed the workbench metaphor to make complex tools feel approachable.

   Note

   An interface designer's word, almost always preceded by the object it borrows: the desktop metaphor, the wastebasket metaphor. The familiar thing stands in for a system function, so users can bring what they already know about desks and bins to tasks on screen. It keeps the logic of the figure of speech, carrying one thing across to another, but here what is carried is a picture rather than a word.

Showing meanings only. Show all 5