metaphors

nounfigure of speech, implied comparison

Synonyms for metaphors

noun figure of speech, implied comparison

Antonyms for metaphors

plain speech

Word Origin & History

late 15c., from Middle French metaphore (Old French metafore, 13c.), and directly from Latin metaphora, from Greek metaphora "a transfer," especially of the sense of one word to a different word, literally "a carrying over," from metapherein "transfer, carry over; change, alter; to use a word in a strange sense," from meta- "over, across" (see meta-) + pherein "to carry, bear" (see infer).

Example Sentences for metaphors

I am ill skilled in beating the coverts of imagination for metaphors of gratitude.

Their language is full of metaphors which imply form and shape.

Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.

Bottle up your metaphors and give us a page of business-like fluency!

His invectives ate in like corrosives, his metaphors bit like adders.

The metaphors of genetics and evolutionary models can be applied.

The metaphors of the university also played an important role.

Machines were conceived and built as metaphors of the human being.

The sentences were too long, the metaphors violent and inapt.

There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour.