metaphor
Noun
(uncountable, figure of speech) The use of a word or phrase to refer to something that it isn’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
Derived terms
* dead metaphor
* extended metaphor
* malaphor
* metaphorical
* metaphorical extension
* metaphoricity
* metaphorism
* stale metaphor
See also
* analogy
* idiom
* metonymy
* simile
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symbol
English
Noun
(en noun )
A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object.
- $ is the symbol for dollars in the US and some other countries.
- ‘
- ‘ is the octothorpe symbol .
- ”Chinese people use word symbols for writing.
- The lion is the symbol”’ of courage; the lamb is the ”’symbol of meekness or patience.
Any object, typically material, which is meant to represent another (usually abstract) even if there is no meaningful relationship.
- The dollar symbol has no relationship to the concept of currency or any related idea.
(linguistics) A type of noun whereby the form refers to the same entity independently of the context; a symbol arbitrarily denotes a referent. See also icon and index.
A summary of a dogmatic statement of faith.
- The Apostles, Nicene Creed and the confessional books of Protestantism, such as the Augsburg Confession of Lutheranism are considered symbols .
Visible traces or impressions, made using a writing device or tool, that are connected together and/or are slightly separated. Sometimes symbols represent objects or events that occupy space or things that are not physical and do not occupy space.
(crystallography) The numerical expression which defines a plane’s position relative to the assumed axes.
That which is thrown into a common fund; hence, an appointed or accustomed duty.
* Jeremy Taylor
- They do their work in the days of peace and come to pay their symbol in a war or in a plague.
Share; allotment.
* Jeremy Taylor
- The persons who are to be judged shall all appear to receive their symbol .
Derived terms
* status symbol
* typographical symbol
Verb
To symbolize.
- (Tennyson)
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