English
Metaphor: Saying One Thing Is Another
A metaphor states that one thing is another, without like or as. See which quality each example actually transfers, and how an extended metaphor keeps running.
Metaphor
A metaphor describes one thing as if it were another, transferring a quality from the second to the first without using like or as.
- Where students meet it
- Grade 4 English, alongside simile in the first block of work on figurative language, and again at GCSE English Language wherever a question asks how a writer's word choice creates an effect.
The short answer
A metaphor states that one thing is another, without using like or as: the classroom was a zoo. Only one quality crosses over — here the noise and disorder, not the cages or the animals. Naming which quality transfers is the whole skill; spotting the metaphor is not.
An example
The classroom was a zoo.
Nobody reading this pictures cages, keepers or a ticket booth. What crosses from the zoo to the classroom is noise, movement and the sense that nobody is in charge — three things, and nothing else. An answer that describes the zoo has followed the sentence in the wrong direction; an answer that names those three things has done the work.
Only one quality makes the crossing
A simile says a thing is like another thing. A metaphor drops the like and says it is the other thing, which is a stronger claim and a riskier one. The reader has to work out which quality was meant, and a metaphor fails when that quality is not obvious enough to be found quickly.
Almost nothing about the second thing actually comes with it. Writing about a metaphor means naming the narrow property that was borrowed, not describing the borrowed object. That is the difference between an answer that gets marks and an answer that fills a paragraph.
Three metaphors, taken apart
Two questions do it every time: what is being compared to what, and which single quality is being handed over.
- The classroom was a zoo. — Transferred: uncontrolled noise and movement. Not transferred: cages, animals, anyone watching from outside.
- He drowned in paperwork. — Transferred: being closed over by a quantity you cannot get above. Not transferred: water, or any actual danger.
- Time is money. — Transferred: that it can be spent, saved, wasted and budgeted, and that it runs out.
Extended metaphors, and dead ones
The third example above is worth a second look, because it shows a metaphor doing structural work. Once time is money, English gains spend, save, waste, invest and afford as things you do to hours. One comparison has quietly organised how a whole language talks about a subject.
An extended metaphor keeps the same comparison running instead of dropping it after a line. Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances" does not stop there — the speech goes on to give each stage of a life as a separate part played on that stage.
A dead metaphor is one used so often it no longer registers as a comparison at all: the leg of a table, the foot of a hill, running late, grasping an idea. They are still metaphors by definition, but nobody pictures anything, which is why writing a paragraph about one in an essay is usually wasted.
Common questions
What is the difference between a metaphor and a simile?
A simile keeps the comparison visible with like or as — she fought like a tiger. A metaphor removes the signpost and asserts the identity — she was a tiger. The similarity being claimed is the same in both. The metaphor simply commits to it harder and leaves the reader to work out which quality was meant.
Can a metaphor be wrong?
It can fail, which comes to the same thing. If the transferred quality is not obvious, the reader stalls while hunting for it. Mixed metaphors fail differently: "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it" pulls two pictures together and neither survives, because the reader is trying to see both at once.
How do I write about a metaphor in an exam answer?
Quote it, name the quality it transfers, then say what that does to the reader. Naming the device earns nothing on its own — every candidate in the room can write "this is a metaphor". The marks sit in the second and third steps, and those are the ones most answers leave out.
Is personification a kind of metaphor?
Most teachers treat it as one. Personification hands a human quality to something not human, which is a transfer of exactly the sort a metaphor makes. It gets its own name because the transferred quality is always the same kind of thing — something only a person or animal could do.
Last updated
Knowing the word is not the same as using it
A tutor can watch a student use this in a question and see exactly where the understanding stops. The first class is free.