Read aloud picture books and look for simile examples and metaphor examples to learn how writers use figurative language to ...

Jan. 14-20 is Idiom Week, and today we thought we’d have a heart-to-heart about some strange phrases we use. Idioms, metaphors and similes are all types of figurative language. According to ...

No matter if you're in school or well past your days in English class, figures of speech are used every day in our lives. From songs and television shows to conversations and advertisements, we often ...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge called metaphor “an act of the imagination,” whereas he relegated simile to “an act of fancy.” Photo from National Portrait Gallery, 1795. Public Domain Samuel Taylor Coleridge ...

Aristotle concluded in the 4th century BC that “the difference is but slight” between similes and metaphors. After all, the metaphor “he’s a bear in the morning,” means the same as the simile “he’s ...

"Narcissus" by Caravaggio (c. 1598). Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain What is an allegory? An allegory (Greek, "a speaking about something else") is a complete and cohesive narrative, for ...

Source: Francesco Bini/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0 The most famous of all allegories is the Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato compares unphilosophical people to prisoners who, having spent their ...

A simile describes something by comparing it to something else, using like or as. A simile is a useful way to describe something without using a long list of adjectives. It can create a vivid image in ...