Definition and Examples of Simile: Literary device

simile definition, what is a simile, simile examples, Literary Terms, Literary Device,

Short notes on Simile:

A FIGURE OF SPEECH that uses like, as, or as if to compare two essentially different objects, actions, or attributes that share some aspect of similarity. In contrast to a METAPHOR, in which a comparison is implied, a simile expresses a comparison directly:

Here and there

 his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper...

– Elizabeth Bishop

An old man whose black face 

shines golden-brown as wet 

pebbles under a street light...

-Denise Levertov           

Like a small

grey coffee-pot

sits the squirrel.

-Humbert Wolfe

[T]he garbage trucks sped away

 gloriously, as if they had been the

Tarleton twins on thoroughbreds

cantering away from the gates of Tara.

-Annie Dillard

An epic simile, or Homeric simile, is an extended, elaborated, ornate simile developed in a lengthy descriptive passage. First used by Homer, epic similes appear in such works as John Milton's Paradise Lost and Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, among others. Here is a relatively brief example from Arnold:

As those black granite pillars, once high-reared

by Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear

His house, now  ’mid their broken flights of steps

Lie prone, enormous, down the mountainside---

So in the sand lay Rustum by his son.

See also:

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE,

METAPHOR.

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