A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object. Metaphor is a type of analogy and is closely related to other rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via association, comparison or resemblance including allegory, hyperbole, and simile.
One of the most prominent examples of a metaphor in English literature is the All the world's a stage monologue from As You Like It:
- All the world’s a stage,
- And all the men and women merely players;
- They have their exits and their entrances; — William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7
This quote is a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage. By figuratively asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses the points of comparison between the world and a stage to convey an understanding about how the world works and the lives of the people within it.
Read more about Metaphor: Structure, Etymology, Comparison With Other Types of Analogy, Common Types, Use Outside Rhetoric, In Historical Linguistics
Famous quotes containing the word metaphor:
“All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)