Bad analogies

OK, so lots of these have been floating around the net for ages, but they’re still fun. Miss Snark has posted a nice set, including these I rather liked.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t. A bit Douglas Adams, but hey!
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 10:33am on 14 July 2006
Category: Funny, Links, General

These are great. And thank you – because I recently wrote a post all about similes. In it I mentioned some things that weren’t similes and I still called them similes because I couldn’t remember what they were. Analogies – that’s it.

Ruth () (URL)
2:40pm on 14 July 2006

Actually I’m a bit confused now. There are metaphors, analogies and similes. And now I’m getting them all muddled up. Oh I HATE admitting this to a Scientist. You’re NOT supposed to be able to WRITE – you do know that don’t you!!!

Ruth () (URL)
2:42pm on 14 July 2006

The trusty OED to the rescue .
simile: a comparison of one thing with another, esp. as an ornament in poetry or rhetoric.
analogy: equivalency or likeness of relations (with the example ‘is often expressed proportionally, as when we say ‘Knowledge is to the mind, what light is to the eye.’ The general recognition of this analogy makes light, or enlightenment, or illumination, an analogical word for knowledge.’)
metaphor: a figure of speech in which a name or descriptive word or phrase is transferred to an object or action different from, but analogous to, that to which it is literally applicable.

So, if you like, a simile says that two things are the same. An analogy says that two things are alike in some respect. A metaphor is an instance of analogy – referring to something that is considered to possess similar characteristics to the thing you are trying to describe, like “the city was a jungle”.

I do so like working in an office with the online OED freely available :-)

Which does, of course, show that the examples in the post above are actually more accurately called bad similes!

pax et bonum

[John] () (URL)
3:10pm on 14 July 2006

Ha! I like the last one the best, although Douglas Adams was a staple of my early adolesence. Yet, till this day, I don’t know what “the question” should have been, because it couldn’t have been, “What is 9 × 7?”

Hammertime () (URL)
7:48pm on 14 July 2006