LIKEN

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (verb)

Verb forms

Present simple: I / you / we / they liken ... he / she / it likens

Past simple: likened

Past participle: likened

-ing form: likening

Sense 1

Meaning:

Consider or describe as similar, equal, or analogous

Example:

You cannot equate success in financial matters with greed

Synonyms:

compare; equate; liken

Classified under:

Verbs of thinking, judging, analyzing, doubting

Hypernyms (to "liken" is one way to...):

consider; study (give careful consideration to)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody PP
Somebody ----s something PP

Credits

Context examples:

His heredity was a life-stuff that may be likened to clay.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

He could not express what he felt, and to himself he likened himself to a sailor, in a strange ship, on a dark night, groping about in the unfamiliar running rigging.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I noted them walking the deck together one morning, and I likened them to the extreme ends of the human ladder of evolution—the one the culmination of all savagery, the other the finished product of the finest civilization.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the shores of a strange land, filled with power of beauty, stumbling and stammering and vainly trying to sing in the rough, barbaric tongue of his brethren in the new land.