What is a metaphor? This term is familiar to a person since school. However, due to various circumstances, many people managed to forget the meaning of this word. And some, using this concept, do not fully understand what is meant by it.
In this article we will tell you what a metaphor is and in what forms it can manifest itself.
What does metaphor mean?
Metaphor is a literary technique that allows you to make a text richer and more emotional. By metaphor we mean a hidden comparison of one object or phenomenon with another on the basis of their similarity.
For example, the moon is called "heavenly cheese" because the cheese is round, yellow, and covered with crater-like holes. Thus, through metaphors, it becomes possible to transfer the properties of one object or action to another.
In addition, the use of metaphors helps to strengthen the phrase and make it brighter. They are especially often used in poetry and fiction. An example is the following verse line: "A small silver stream is running, flowing."
It is clear that the water is not silvery, and also that it cannot "run". Such a vivid metaphorical image allows the reader to understand that the water is extremely clean and that the stream flows at a high speed.
Types of metaphors
All metaphors are divided into several types:
- Sharp. Usually this is just a couple of opposite words in meaning: fiery speech, stone face.
- Erased. A kind of metaphors that are firmly rooted in the lexicon, as a result of which a person no longer pays attention to their figurative meaning: a table leg, a forest of hands.
- Metaphor formula. One of the types of erased metaphor, which is no longer possible to rephrase otherwise: the worm of doubt, like clockwork.
- Exaggeration. The metaphor through which there is a deliberate exaggeration of an object, phenomenon or event: "I have already repeated it a million times", "I am a thousand percent sure."
Metaphors enrich our speech and allow us to describe something more expressively. If they were not, then our speech would be "dry" and not expressive.
