/ 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)

Credits

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