(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.
Trope
Definition:
(n.) The use of a word or expression in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it; the use of a word or expression as changed from the original signification to another, for the sake of giving life or emphasis to an idea; a figure of speech.
(n.) The word or expression so used.
Example Sentences:
(1) For further education, this would be my priority: a substantial increase in funding and an end to tinkering with the form of qualifications and bland repetition of the “parity of esteem” trope.
(2) Arguing for a new nation state, the white paper understands that the old tropes of nationhood will no longer do, though until recently they sustained the anglophobic tendency of everyday nationalism, though until recently they sustained the anglophobic tendency of everyday nationalism.
(3) Ihave never really liked the liberal-left trope of Britain's "progressive majority", lately talked up by people campaigning for AV .
(4) Ivens's apology was issued after a meeting with Jewish community organisations including the Board of the Deputies of British Jews, which had complained to the Press Complaints Commission on Sunday, describing the cartoon as "appalling" and "all the more disgusting" for being published on Holocaust Memorial Day, "given the similar tropes levelled against Jews by the Nazis".
(5) As the report explains, researchers have long pointed to a widely believed cultural script of what constitutes a “real” rape – the trope of the lone lady being attacked at night as she made her way home through dark alleys.
(6) Purnell has long argued it is time to discard the old tropes of Brownite and Blairite.
(7) Melgaard pays poor lip service to these racist tropes, arguing that "racism is a form of sexuality.
(8) By focusing on Spock and Kirk as novices finding their footing, and putting their gut-vs-logic dynamic at the heart of the film, Abrams gives non-followers plenty to hang on to, but also pays homage to familiar Trek tropes: Bones says: "I'm a doctor, not a physicist!
(9) Her main project is new girl Tai (the late Brittany Murphy) who arrives at school as a clumsy, unconfident "ugly duckling" ripe for making over – allowing the film to indulge in that wonderful 80s teen movie trope: the dressing up montage.
(10) Instead, we returned to the old political tropes: a prime minister outside Downing street, backbenchers grousing on rolling news channels, financial experts delighted outside City buildings and Nigel Farage on College Green, standing outside the palace he wants to get in.
(11) You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” it said in a statement emailed to journalists with unusual zeal and which also repeated the Trump trope of “the dishonest media”.
(12) All these silly tropes appear in the first episode of My Transsexual Summer, Channel 4's new primetime reality doc .
(13) It takes the usual prison TV tropes of bent screws, lesbian affairs, claustrophobic pettiness and racial divides, and makes them seem fresh, skewing our perspectives in unexpected ways.
(14) Trump and his appeal embody certain universal tropes about bullying, humiliation and comedy.
(15) And the presence of the miniature handwritten note on textured paper is so Andersonesque as to make this essentially a trope magnified by a trope.
(16) It’s a trope that often plays an important part in the narrative of zombie stories.
(17) Recent months have seen a number of white, A-list pop artists such as Lily Allen, Iggy Azalea and Taylor Swift come under fire for appropriating black music tropes and perpetuating damaging stereotypes.
(18) It is a favoured trope of Nigel Farage and his fellow-travellers that the “Westminster elite” doesn’t want to talk about immigration.
(19) Is there a danger that – using the now-standard tropes of a strong sense of place, a dysfunctional detective, a haunting soundtrack and brutal crimes – the series will be seen as just another exercise in noir?
(20) No doubt it will soon make a comeback, but for now the “reform is stuck” trope has descended into an unedifying and largely evidence-free “debate” over penalty rates .