Metaphors, Similes and Similarity

Abstract

With few exceptions, recent writers on metaphor begin their discussions with an attack on the traditional view that metaphors are elliptical similes. The elliptical simile view, in its simplest form, is that similes are used to express comparisons and metaphors are simply elliptical similes. For reasons that will emerge later, stated this way, the view is too simple — among other things, it does not always seem possible (or useful) to transpose constructions that are legitimately called metaphors into constructions with the grammatical shape of a simile. For this reason, and for some others, I prefer to say that both similes and metaphors express figurative comparisons: similes explicitly, metaphors implicitly, sometimes, though not always, through elliptical similes. In what follows, I’1l call this the comparativist account of metaphors — or simply comparativism. I have defended this approach to metaphors in detail in Fiquratively Speaking.

The simile is also a metaphor. [Similes] are to be employed just as metaphors are, since they really are the same thing ...

Aristotle (Rhetoric, 1406b)