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 ...

"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 ...

Source: Francesco Bini/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0 The most famous of all allegories is the Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato compares unphilosophical people to prisoners who, having spent their ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. What is a metaphor? Check out these examples in songs, literature and more. No matter if you're in school or well past your days ...

It can be quite revealing to tune in to the kind of imagery people use when talking. Consider, for example, how people speak about the current economic crisis. Some view the economy as a complex ...

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 ...

Metaphors are a fundamental aspect of human language and cognition, allowing us to understand complex concepts and relationships by mapping them onto more familiar and concrete domains. However, the ...

We have plumbed the depths of abstract words, but what about abstract ideas? Abstractions are a fact of professional life. The law is littered with them. Think of the legislative process, intellectual ...

No matter if you're in school or well past your days in English class, figures of speech are used every day in our lives. From songs and television shows to conversations and advertisements, we often ...