metaphor
meta|phor /m'etəfɔːr/ (metaphors)
1 [N-VAR]
A metaphor is an imaginative way of describing something by referring to something else which is the same in a particular way. For example, if you want to say that someone is very shy and frightened of things, you might say that they are a mouse.
...the avoidance of `violent expressions and metaphors' like `kill two birds with one stone'.
...the writer's use of metaphor.
2 [N-VAR] oft N for n
If one thing is a metaphor for another, it is intended or regarded as a symbol of it.
The divided family remains a powerful metaphor for a society that continued to tear itself apart.
3 [PHRASE] V inflects
If you mix your metaphors, you use two conflicting metaphors. People do this accidentally, or sometimes deliberately as a joke.
To mix yet more metaphors, you were trying to run before you could walk, and I've clipped your wings...
1 [N-VAR]
A metaphor is an imaginative way of describing something by referring to something else which is the same in a particular way. For example, if you want to say that someone is very shy and frightened of things, you might say that they are a mouse.
...the avoidance of `violent expressions and metaphors' like `kill two birds with one stone'.
...the writer's use of metaphor.
2 [N-VAR] oft N for n
If one thing is a metaphor for another, it is intended or regarded as a symbol of it.
The divided family remains a powerful metaphor for a society that continued to tear itself apart.
3 [PHRASE] V inflects
If you mix your metaphors, you use two conflicting metaphors. People do this accidentally, or sometimes deliberately as a joke.
To mix yet more metaphors, you were trying to run before you could walk, and I've clipped your wings...