How to Use Metaphor Including Simile

last year the quintillion institute of words about words issued its report on the rediscovery of the term metonomy as part of that report we discussed the things that make metonymy different from metaphor well the time has now come for us to discuss metaphor itself at its most basic metaphor involves comparison between two dissimilar things in order to highlight shared similarity often in surprising or illuminating way you use metaphor to make point that might otherwise go unnoticed if you saw our report on metonymy you'd remember that it works by leveraging relationships between words orbiting in the same universe of meaning metaphor however works by leveraging relationships between words orbiting in separate universes so you might say that cardinals are nature's alarm clock waking it up from the sleep of winter in that case you're actually dealing with two metaphors first you have cardinals being compared to alarm clocks more specifically because they both emit distinct repeating sounds and you have winter being compared to sleep with both being periods of apparent inactivity so you get metaphor comparing unlike things like cardinals and alarm clocks and highlighting their shared similarities like the sounds that they make in order to generate new insights like how cardinals sing in the spring when nature is becoming more lively just as alarm clocks go off in the morning when people are becoming more lively and while metaphor's most obvious application is in making poetic comparisons to generate new insights there's more to consider when using metaphor for one not all metaphors work in the same way the lively poetic ones catch our attention and reframe our perspectives but others work more quietly working to frame our fundamental understanding of the world that we live in why for example do people go crazy and not come crazy well obviously because we don't want to be associated with craziness so our language bears metaphorical reference to distance when people become crazier they get farther away from us as if perhaps we weren't also little crazy we also have the potentially unfortunate metaphors of attacking and defending arguments language that frames our discussions and debates as acts of war rather than as the very best tools that we have to avoid violent conflicts imagine what would happen if instead of attacking arguments we harmonized garnished or smelted those might not be much better but they certainly would frame our debates in very different ways of course these kinds of quiet metaphors often aren't even perceived as metaphors at all and they're just seen as regular parts of the language in fact some even call them dead metaphors which is itself metaphor but that's not to say that they're dead and worthless just that they aren't quite as lively or attention-grabbing as some of the more poetic metaphors that we might be used to so if you're trying to get somebody's attention with new insight using metaphors like they kicked the bucket fell head over heels in love or needed to hold their horses isn't going to do the job your listeners probably aren't going to hear those as metaphors just as regular old phrases but if you are working with more poetic attention-grabbing metaphor you're going to want to make sure that that metaphor grabs people's attention in the right way you know if you want to praise your niece's naturatory prowess for example and you say that she's fish it's possible that somebody might misunderstand your metaphorical intent and try to apply other fishy attributes to your niece do you mean that she's slippery that she's easily fooled by shiny spinning things or that she smells awful after few days usually when you use metaphor you're saying that two things are similar in very specific way not that they're similar in every way so when you call your niece fish you're saying that she's good at swimming not of course that she spends all day bumping into glass barriers if you aren't careful with metaphor you can inadvertently create opportunities for your readers to misunderstand the comparison that you're trying to make so when you're using metaphor just be mindful of the ways that you can guide your readers in the right direction you could use clues in the larger context if you talk about how your niece is fish in paragraph about how well she swims there's much higher chance that your readers will make the right comparison you could also try to make more specific metaphor rather than just say that your niece is fish you could say that her hands and feet are fins when she's in the water or you could build more elaborated metaphor to suggest that your niece is fish without saying it outright for example by saying that she darts sleek through the water unbothered by the need for air lateral lines charged with determination of course that particular example gets little goofy but you get the idea you can build metaphor over time without having to say it outright but there is one other vital tool that you can use if you're worried that particular metaphor might over commit you to comparison that you don't want to make and that's the simile now academics love to make careful and closely guarded distinctions between their favorite terms and you'll often run into people who make very big deal about how metaphors and similes are fundamentally different things but are they most commonly you'll hear that similes are like metaphors but they use like or as so instead of saying that your niece is fish you'd say that she's like fish yes totally different you'll have to forgive my snark but we here at the quintillion institute fail to see why the differences between metaphor and simile have to be defended with such pedantic vigor in fact it is our position that simile is not so much wholly apart from metaphor but that simile is qualified metaphor when you say that your niece is like fish it's like saying that there were like 35 people at the party last night when someone gets grumpy and says excuse me there were 33 people at the party last night you can reply yeah said like 35. similarly if somebody starts pointing out all the ways that your niece is not fish you can ease up on the metaphorical intensity by just saying that she's like fish that way your readers will be less likely to be distracted by all the potential dissimilarities between your niece and fish because you haven't asserted total comparison just qualified likeness so if you don't want to come on as strongly as you would with metaphor use simile to evoke comparison while also leaving you and your readers some wiggle room because similes do essentially the same thing as metaphors just little less strongly well our controversial assertion that all similes are metaphors aside hopefully you can see just how useful metaphor can be in any project not just the poetic metaphor gives you chance to make new connections and to illuminate insights that keep your readers engaged and on their toes and whether they're strong metaphors or qualified similes we at the quintillion institute endorse them all we sincerely hope that you'll make good use of them whatever you're writing and we even invite you to deliver few into the comments box below of course feel free to think outside the box even as you write within it but again on behalf of all of us at the institute thank you for your time and support our research teams are sailing ahead towards new rediscoveries at full speed and we invite you to embark with us your boarding passes may be redeemed through the subscribe button below and until next time bon voyage no we're not relocating to ship that was metaphor weren't you even listening well hold on suppose you don't have to cancel the captain's hat order