simile: a comparison using “like” or “as”
metaphor: a comparison that does not use “like” or “as”
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You might remember metaphor. He’s the one you encounter in high school English classes, and at first he sometimes gets confused with his brother simile. Actually, I don’t know if they are brothers at all. They’re more like half-brothers. Or first cousins once removed.
It’s really a shame that metaphor comes to us as the flip side of simile. After you’ve gotten past the high school vocabulary quizzes, it becomes clear that simile and metaphor aren’t related – maybe they’re acquainted, but they’re really nothing more than Facebook friends. I doubt that they would even recognize each other if they crossed paths at the grocery store. Due to the tenuous nature of their relationship, not only is it ridiculous to group them together, but it is absolutely absurd – unthinkable, really! – to make these the only two distinctions. It is like categorizing all the things in the world according to whether or not they are bananas. “For the sake of simplicity, we have put everything into two handy categories: things that are bananas and things that are not.”
But somehow, the Writers of Definitions for Literary Terms have put one over on us. They have taken all the comparisons since the dawn of time and neatly divided them, for our convenience, into two groups: comparisons that use “like” or “as,” and comparisons that don’t.
“Wait a minute. That second one is an incredibly general category.”
I’m so glad you brought that up.
Since the “metaphor” category is ENORMOUS, it’s no wonder that there are metaphors walking around right under our noses, and we never even notice them. They don’t have “like” or “as” in them and so not only do we fail to realize that they are metaphors, we don’t realize that they are comparisons at all.
And so, my friends, it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you today five metaphors that you never knew were metaphors.
Drum roll, please.
First: science. Science tops the list. It isn’t actually itself a metaphor, but it is entirely constructed of metaphors that help us understand the way things work. You will realize this when you study light. (Go back to high school if you need to. Get off at Physics instead of English.) Scientists tell us that light is tricky. In some ways it acts like a bunch of little particles, and in some ways it acts more like waves. But let’s be honest, scientists – light is light. You talk about particles and waves because those help us understand what it really is. But ultimately, light is nothing but itself. When you describe it as being made up of particles, you’re just comparing light to itsy-bitsy-too-small-to-see-things (you would say “particles”), and you’re making the comparison because it’s useful. In the end, though, you’re just comparing two things. You’re not using “like” or “as.” It’s a metaphor.
Second: words. Words are less intuitive, but they are still metaphors. The word “dog” is not a dog. We know that it has something to do with the actual dog (the real thing, the one that barks and licks) but we also know that the word is only a way to help us talk about dogs when they aren’t around. (“You know those things that wag their tails, and bark all the time?”) In some ways, the word “dog” is connected to the barking, licking, tail-wagging thing, but let’s be honest – dogs are dogs. They aren’t three letters of the alphabet all squished together, and they aren’t the sound that you make when you pronounce those letters. When we use the word “dog” to represent the barking tail-waggers, we’re only doing it because it’s easier than saying “barking tail-waggers” every time we have to talk about a mess that the barking tail-waggers have made. Even though the word “dog” isn’t much like the real thing, we are comparing the word to the real dog every time we say it. We’re connecting two things – comparing them. We’re not using “like” or “as.” Come to think of it, it works the same way for every single other word. Words are metaphors.
Third: economics. I’m getting into dangerous waters here, because I know almost nothing about economics. But let me tell you what I know about economics. Economics doesn’t tell you what happens with people and money (“Joe walks into a store with a gun and gets away with all the money in the cash register . . .”) but it does tell you what usually happens with people and money (“If Joe can buy an orange for fifty cents at my house and for a dollar at your house, he’s going to buy my orange.”) If economics told us what actually happens, we would find out that Joe didn’t want an orange at all and didn’t buy an orange from anyone. But economics is a “most of the time” sort of system. It helps us predict what will happen by comparing what usually happens with people and money to what we want to happen with people and money. Another comparison, and “like” and “as” are nowhere in sight.
Four: money. Money is really just money (or paper and ink, if you want to be precise), but it represents work of some kind (even the easy kind of work, like watching stocks go up) and so we give it to people who have what we need, and once those people have it, it represents the work that they did to give us the stuff that we needed. The money is not itself the work that the grocery store checker did, but it is proof that the grocery store checker did the work, and it stands in for the work since he can’t carry his work around in a box (“I’ll trade you three spoonfuls of work for that chicken!”) We are constantly using money as a metaphor for work (even if the work in question wasn’t done by the person who has the money).
Five: because there are always five. But if I had to come up with a fifth metaphor, I would say everything, or very nearly everything. Because so many things are metaphors. Everywhere you turn you will find people using one thing to describe another without using “like” or “as.” Look anywhere you like. People are comparing things right and left, and they have no idea that they are using metaphors because their English teachers got so hung up on the completely pointless “like” or “as” system of categorization!
And now you will see how completely senseless it was for the Writers of Definitions for Literary Terms to tell us that a metaphor compares two things using “like” or “as.” They were thinking of “the sunset is a bowl of strawberry ice cream,” and they got everything else thrown in. If they had meant something more specific, they should have said so. Or perhaps they were giving us a hint. “Metaphors are everywhere,” they were telling us. They are probably quite pleased with themselves for hiding so many metaphors from us. Hidden in plain sight.
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simile: a comparison using “like” or “as”
metaphor: everything else
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