Wikimore

See also: símile

English

Etymology

Category:English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European#SIMILE Category:English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *sem-#SIMILE

From Latin Category:English terms borrowed from Latin#SIMILE Category:English terms derived from Latin#SIMILE simile (“comparison, likeness, parallel”) (first attested 1393), originally from simile, neuter form of similis (“like, similar, resembling”). Compare English similar.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada, General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈsɪməli/Category:English 3-syllable words#SIMILECategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#SIMILE
- Audio (California): (file)
  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#SIMILE
(New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈsəməli/Category:English 3-syllable words#SIMILE Category:English terms with IPA pronunciation#SIMILE

Noun

Examples (figure of speech)
Her eyes were like stars.

simile (countable and uncountable, plural similes or similia)Category:English lemmas#SIMILE Category:English nouns#SIMILE Category:English uncountable nouns#SIMILE Category:English countable nouns#SIMILE Category:English countable nouns#SIMILE Category:English nouns with irregular plurals#SIMILE Category:English entries with incorrect language header#SIMILE Category:Pages with entries#SIMILE Category:Pages with 6 entries#SIMILE

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

Hypernym: figure of speech

Coordinate terms: (when the comparison is implicit) metaphor, analogy
- 1826, Thomas Bayly Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanours, volume 33:
  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 […]
  Category:English terms with quotations#SIMILE
  Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned
- 1887, George Saintsbury, “Early Elizabethan prose”, in A History of Elizabethan Literature‎:
  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.
  Category:English terms with quotations#SIMILE
- 1905, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, chapter 2, in Where Angels Fear to Tread, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, page 57:
  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.
  Category:English terms with quotations#SIMILE
- 1925, Countee Cullen, Fruit of the Flower:
  My father is a quiet man / With sober, steady ways; / For simile, a folded fan; / His nights are like his days.
  Category:English terms with quotations#SIMILE
  Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned
Similarity or resemblance to something else; likeness, similitude.
Something similar that's not a clone.