(n.) An affectation of excessive elegance and refinement of language; high-flown diction.
Example Sentences:
Simile
Definition:
(n.) A word or phrase by which anything is likened, in one or more of its aspects, to something else; a similitude; a poetical or imaginative comparison.
Example Sentences:
(1) Merely being around Soames – who is bulky, self-assured, and often speaks in similes that involve things like spaniels, grandmothers, rhododendrons and oysters – evokes sensations of an earlier, stronger Britain.
(2) "My hope is that the similes will repair what gets broken by the biographies, in the same way that the natural world does.
(3) The poem is structured like a lament, the soldiers' epitaphs interspersed with direct translations of Homer's extended similes, each of which is transcribed, lullingly, twice over.
(4) It's hard not to describe this creature without resorting to multiple similes – it's like a mushroom, an umbrella, a beating heart, an alien lifeform – all of which diminish its glory, as indeed does the word "jellyfish".
(5) She has terrific way with ideas, simile (“as lazy as a corpse”) and visual takes: “There are many women on the Kurfürstendamm.
(6) And some of her lyrics, even viewed coldly on a page, are impressive: "I carve lyrics into cubicle doors like they were pyramid walls and these were hieroglyphs, hold pen with an iron grip, my mind is the storm and the words are the eye in it," she raps on one track, and yet when she adds, "Evil in the world, stay peaceful in spite of it; 'cause snakes have never understood the way the lions live", you don't think, wow, amazing, you think – nice simile, but what on earth do you mean?
(7) Andrew Cooper, Conservative peer: ‘It is no accident that Fallon used Miliband’s political fratricide as his simile’ Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrew Cooper.
(8) Then comes the powerful simile of the cigarette "like a fire lit by a survivor".
(9) Another debate speaker launched a simile about a broken-legged camel that was cruelly cut off by the red light.)
(10) Even the name Jeremy Hunt is so redolent of upper-class brutality that it feels like he belongs in one of those Martin Amis books where working-class people are called things like Dave Rubbish and Billy Darts (No shade, Martin – I’m just a joke writer: I envy real writers, their metaphors and similes taking off into the imagination sky like big birds or something).
(11) Furthermore, from knowledge of the enzyme kinetics of the system we have been able to build a model of the pathway that allows us computer similation of its behavior and calculation of the Flux Control Coefficient profile at different glucose concentrations.
(12) Six parasite species (Phyllodistomum simile, Crowcrocaecum testiobliquum, Crepidostomum metoecus, Cyathocephalus truncatus, Truttaedacnitis truttae and Dentitruncus truttae) were recovered.
(13) But Wodehouse's pre-eminent stylistic flourish is his use of metaphor and simile: "Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes"; a man "wilts" like "a salted snail" – and one finds the same in his letters.
(14) Hence a "simil-estrogen", more than an "anti-estrogen" mechanism of action is postulated and a selection of patients for treatment in the "mid postmenopausal age" is recommended.
(15) In the Gospels, the metamorphosis caused by the epileptic seizure is used as a simile for Christ's transfiguration through suffering, death, and resurrection.
(16) If this seems a slightly odd simile, bear in mind Greek medics were not familiar with dissection and so could only observe protruding tumours.)
(17) The result was a hydrothorax that allowed a severe cardiac simile tamponed syndrome.
(18) Of course, it is no accident that the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, chose to use Miliband’s political fratricide as his simile.
(19) In 1846 Hebra, under the name of Seborrhea Congestiva described disc-shaped patches and introduced the butterfly simile for the malar rash.
(20) "One of the reasons I repeat the similes is that you need time off from the grief," Oswald explains.