SIMILE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does simile mean? 

• SIMILE (noun)
  The noun SIMILE has 1 sense:

1. a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with 'like' or 'as')

  Familiarity information: SIMILE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SIMILE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with 'like' or 'as')

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("simile" is a kind of...):

figure; figure of speech; image; trope (language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense)

 Context examples 

Aha! he said, your simile of the tiger good, for me, and I shall adopt him.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

She is as obstinate as—Thorpe never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a proper one.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

"Weathercock can without the wind," suggested Jo, as he paused for a simile.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that's the figure, or the simile, or whatever it's called, which he chooses to use.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Successful in this, the old simile of the needle in the haystack would be mild indeed compared with his brother’s chance of finding him.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

"Not only a fellow-countryman, my good sir," said Challenger, "but also, if I may be allowed to enlarge your simile, an ally of the first value. This beech tree will be our saviour."

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In poetry, they must be allowed to excel all other mortals; wherein the justness of their similes, and the minuteness as well as exactness of their descriptions, are indeed inimitable.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

His celebrated passages are quoted by everybody; they are in half the books we open, and we all talk Shakespeare, use his similes, and describe with his descriptions; but this is totally distinct from giving his sense as you gave it.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He was but a poor man himself, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel—those were her similes.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I want an appropriate simile.—as far as your friend Emily herself left poor Valancourt when she went with her aunt into Italy.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)