Metaphor

Pronunciation

UK IPA: /ËˆmÉ›t.É™.fÉ”Ë(É¹)/
US IPA: /Ëˆme.tÉ™.fÉš/, /ËˆmÉ›t.É™.fÉ”É¹/
Hyphenation: meta + phor
Rhymes: -É”Ë(É¹)

Origin

From Latin metaphora, from Ancient Greek Î¼ÎµÏ„Î±Ï†Î¿ÏÎ¬, from Î¼ÎµÏ„Î±Ï†ÎÏÏ‰ (metapherÅ, "I transfer, apply"), from Î¼ÎµÏ„Î¬ (meta, "with, across, after") + Ï†ÎÏÏ‰ (pherÅ, "I bear, carry")

Full definition of metaphor

Noun

metaphor

(countable and uncountable; plural metaphors)

(uncountable, figure of speech) The use of a word or phrase to refer to something that it isnâ€™t, invoking a direct similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described, but in the case of English without the words like or as, which would imply a simile.

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins. — Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, 1870, translated by Daniel Beazeale, 1979.

(countable, rhetoric) The word or phrase used in this way. An implied comparison.

Hypernyms

figure of speech