Allegory

Quick meaning: Allegory is a noun meaning A character or thing which symbolically represents someone or something else; an emblem, a symbol.

Meaning

A character or thing which symbolically represents someone or something else; an emblem, a symbol.

More Meanings

1. A picture, story, or other form of communication in which one or more characters, events, or places are used to reveal a hidden, broader message about real-world issues and occurrences.
2. A category that retains some of the structure of the category of binary relations between sets, representing a high-level generalization of that category.
3. (uncountable, rhetoric) The use of symbols which may be interpreted to reveal a hidden, broader message, usually a moral or political one, about real-world issues and occurrences; also, the interpretation of such symbols.
4. (archaic) Synonym of allegorize.

Example Sentences

Allegory Metaphors continues still, / Which with new graces every sentence fill.

[T]hey held the Creed in the plain literal ſenſe thereof vvithout any ſhuffling Allegories, […]

Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot be religious Faith: the Faith itself must first be there, then Allegory enough will gather round it, as the fit body round its soul.

As some of the finest compositions among the ancients are in allegory, I have endeavoured, in several of my papers, to revive that way of writing, and hope I have not been altogether unsuccessful in it; […]

Word Forms

• allegories
• allegorying
• allegoried

Synonyms for allegory

Depending on context, synonyms include fable, parable, apologue.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include parable, apologue, fable, metaphor, analogy, symbolism.

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