Guide to Literary Terms | Simile

Simile - a figure of speech in which two things, essentially different but thought to be alike in one or more respects, are compared using “like,” “as,” “as if,” or “such” for the purpose of explanation, allusion, or ornament.

The term is from the Latin similis, meaning “like.”

Common contemporary similes are “running like a bat out of hell” and “working nonstop as if possessed.” There is a simile in John Milton’s Paradise Lost:

Anon out of the earth a Fabrick huge
Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound
Of Dulcet Symphony and voices sweet.
Book I : lines 710 – 712

Perhaps the best known simile in English poetry is Robert Burns’s line:

“My love is like a red, red rose.”

see: allusion, figure of speech, metaphor