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Humorous Metaphors

Obama has a look on his face like a calf at a new gate.

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Boy, that was a real toad-strangler!
 
For an excellent read, google 'Dan Ratherisms', culled from his election coverage, i.e., 'This race is as tight as the rusted lug nuts on a '55 Ford.'
 
Is there an English major in the house?

Not an English major but, as far as I've understood it, a simile is a metaphor although a metaphor need not be a simile. Note that I have been reading and speaking English most of my life.

simile: 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.

metaphor: A word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar.


Chaos is a friend of mine. -- Bob Dylan

I'd call you a sadistic beastialic necrophiliac, but that would be beating a dead horse.

Wouldn't that be fucking a dead horse?
 
Catelyn watched from the battlements, waiting and watching as she had waited and watched so many times before. Beneath her, the swift wild Tumblestone plunged like a spear into the side of the broad Red Fork, its blue-white current churning the muddy red-brown flow of the greater river. A morning mist hung over the water, as thin as gossamer and the wisps of memory.

... The boat was almost out of range, drifting in and out of the river mists. Wordless, Edmure thrust the bow at his uncle.

"Swiftly, " ser Brynden said. He nocked an arrow, held it steady for the brand, drew and released before Catelyn was quite sure that the fire had caught ... but as the shot rose, she saw the flames trailing through the air, a pale orange pennon. The boat had vanished in the mists. Falling, the flaming arrow was swallowed up as well ... but only for a heartbeat. Then, sudden as hope, they saw the red bloom flower. The sails took fire, and the fog glowed pink and orange. For a moment Catelyn saw the outline of the boat clearly, wreathed in leaping flames.
 
I remember my Freshman English instructor warning about dead metaphors, images which have become the literal meaning and lose their metaphorical meaning.

Example: When we hear the word "cigarette," we no longer think of a little cigar (cigar-ette).
 
A simile is a subset of metaphor. The brute force, side by side type, linked by the use of specific words type of metaphor.

I'm not buying it either. But you could say that they are both types of comparisons.
 
I remember my Freshman English instructor warning about dead metaphors, images which have become the literal meaning and lose their metaphorical meaning.

Example: When we hear the word "cigarette," we no longer think of a little cigar (cigar-ette).

I do. :confused2:
 
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