Samuel Taylor Coleridge called metaphor “an act of the imagination,” whereas he relegated simile to “an act of fancy.” Photo from National Portrait Gallery, 1795. Public Domain Samuel Taylor Coleridge ...

This lesson is as fun as recess! Join Ms. Randi House as she talks about similes and metaphors and how they make reading a lot more interesting. Rise and Shine is available to stream on pbs.org and ...

Jan. 14-20 is Idiom Week, and today we thought we’d have a heart-to-heart about some strange phrases we use. Idioms, metaphors and similes are all types of figurative language. According to ...

"Narcissus" by Caravaggio (c. 1598). Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain What is an allegory? An allegory (Greek, "a speaking about something else") is a complete and cohesive narrative, for ...

A simile describes something by comparing it to something else, using like or as. A simile is a useful way to describe something without using a long list of adjectives. It can create a vivid image in ...

Why would someone who is fit be compared to a fiddle? Is it the slim waistline that the violin possesses? Is it the rowing machine that the fiddle uses? Of course not. Originally, "fit" meant fitting ...

Pierre-Paul Delvaux exhorts that unlike poetic metaphor, which aims to make the familiar unusual, pedagogical metaphor aims to make the unusual familiar. "[...] There is in the use of pedagogical ...