ENGLISH DICTIONARY

Simile

Definition, Meaning & Examples

Pronunciation /ˈsɪməli/ · Part of speech noun

Quick meaning: Simile is a noun meaning (literary device) A figure of speech in which one thing is explicitly compared to another, using e.g. like or as.

Meaning

(literary device) A figure of speech in which one thing is explicitly compared to another, using e.g. like or as.

More Meanings

  1. Similarity or resemblance to something else; likeness, similitude.
  2. Something similar that's not a clone.

Example Sentences

My father is a quiet man / With sober, steady ways; / For simile, a folded fan; / His nights are like his days.
The second was a fancy, which amounts to a mania, for similes, strung together in endless lists, and derived as a rule from animals, vegetables, or minerals, especially from the Fauna and Flora of fancy.
What follows should be prefaced with some simile—the simile of a powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake—for it blew Philip up in the air and flattened him on the ground and swallowed him up in the depths.
He made a simile of George the third to Nebuchadnezzar, and of the prince regent to Belshazzar, and insisted that the prince represented the latter in not paying much attention to what had happened to kings […]

Word Forms

Antonyms for simile

Common opposites include dissimile.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include fae, fac, autographs, resemblance, likeness, metaphor.

Related Dictionary Tools

Sources & Attribution

FreeDictionaryAPI.com / Wiktionary · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0

Dictionary data is provided by FreeDictionaryAPI.com and sourced from Wiktionary under its stated license.