The Branches of Semantics "Simile"

A. Simile

A simile is a figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in a phrase introduced by like or as.

grammar : a phrase that uses the words like or as to describe someone or something by comparing it with someone or something else that is similar.

The simile sets two ideas side by side; in the metaphor they become superimposed. It would seem natural to think that simile, being simpler, is older." (F.L. Lucas, Style. Macmillan, 1955).

Examples : 

1)      Our soldiers are as brave as lions.

2)      He is as funny as a monkey.

3)      The water well was as dry as a bone

4)      "When Lee Mellon finished the apple he smacked his lips together like a pair of cymbals."
(Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General From Big Sur, 1964) 

5)      "She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat."
(James Joyce, "The Boarding House"

6)      “Her mind was like a balloon with static cling, attracting random ideas as they floated by.”
(Jonathan Franzen, Purity. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015)

7)      "Good coffee is like friendship: rich and warm and strong."
(slogan of Pan-American Coffee Bureau)

8)      "He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow."
(George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859)

9)      "Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep."
(Carl Sandburg)

10) "My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain."
(W.H. Auden, quoted by Humphrey Carpenter in W.H. Auden: A Biography. Harper Collins, 1981)

11) "He's got a face like a wet Sunday in a debtors' prison."
(Joe Bennett, Mustn't Grumble. Simon & Schuster, 2006)

12) "It is all, God help us, a matter of rocks. The rocks shape life like hands around swelling dough."
(Annie Dillard, "Life on the Rocks: The Galápagos")

13) "you fit into me
      like a hook into an eye
      a fish hook
      an open eye"
      (Margaret Atwood) 

14) "A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard."
(George Orwell, "A Hanging," 1931)

15) "Matt Leinart slid into the draft like a bald tire on black ice."
(Rob Oller, Columbus Dispatch, Feb. 25, 2007)

Simile inputs vividness into what we say. Authors and poets utilize comparisons to convey their

sentiments and thoughts through vivid word pictures like a simile.

Simile Examples in Literature :

a) Written by Joseph Conrad,

“I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage.”

The lines have been taken from Lord Jim. The helplessness of the soul is being compared with a bird in a cage beating itself against the merciless wires of the cage, to be free.

b) In her novel To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf compares the velocity of her thoughts about the two men with that of spoken words.

“. . . impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one’s pencil . . .”
She says both are difficult to follow and cannot be copied in words by a pencil.

c) Taken from a short story Lolita written by Vladimir Nabokov,

“Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa.”

This simile produces a humorous effect by comparing old women leaning on walking sticks with the ancient leaning tower of Pisa.

d) Robert Burns uses a simile to describe the beauty of his beloved.

“O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.”
He says that his love is a fresh red rose that blossoms in the spring.

B. Function of Simile

From the above discussion, we can infer the function of similes both in our everyday life as well as in literature. Using similes attracts the attention and appeals directly to the senses of listeners or readers encouraging their imagination to comprehend what is being communicated. In addition, it inspires life-like quality in our daily talks and in the characters of fiction or poetry. Simile allows readers to relate the feelings of a writer or a poet to their personal experiences. Therefore, the use of similes makes it easier for the readers to understand the subject matter of a literary text, which may have been otherwise too demanding to be comprehended. Like metaphors, similes also offer variety in our ways of thinking and offers new perspectives of viewing the world.

References :

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/simile

http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/simileterm.htm

http://literarydevices.net/simile/