The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
simile
(sm´l) (KEY) [Lat.,=likeness], in rhetoric, a figure of speech in which an object is explicitly compared to another object. Robert Burns’s poem “A Red Red Rose” contains two straightforward similes:
My love is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June: My love is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune.
The epic, or Homeric, simile is an elaborate, formal, and sustained simile derived from those of Homer.
m´
l
) (KEY) [Lat.,=likeness], in rhetoric, a figure of speech in which an object is explicitly compared to another object. Robert Burns’s poem “A Red Red Rose” contains two straightforward similes:
