Simile - TV Tropes
- ️Mon Feb 24 2025
"He ate rice and beans as if he were a prince
He drank and hiccupped as if he were a castaway
He danced and laughed as if he heard music
And he stumbled toward the sky as if he were an alcoholic
And he floated through the air as if he were a bird"
— Chico Buarque, Construção
A simile
is a very common figure of speech that directly compares an event, character, object, setting etc. to a different one, using a characteristic shared by both of them (saying a character "flew like a bird", or is "as cold as ice", for example). This similarity can be poetically explored by the text to emphasize the resemblance between those two elements, strengthen their connection, make the work feel more alive, or to create imagery, allowing the audience to picture a concept that could otherwise be far too removed from them.
For instance, Homer frequently uses detailed, long similes (appropriately named "Homeric similes"), which were very useful for his audience, since the far majority of the original listeners to Narrative Poems like The Iliad and The Odyssey would have never been to war or made long travels. Thus, comparing larger-than-life situations to mundane, everyday experiences the average person could relate to makes stories like these much more personal, emotional and captivating, since it provides points of reference the audience can apply to their feelings.
The comparison inherent to the simile makes this figure of speech very similar to the metaphor, with the main difference being their straightforwardness: metaphors make the comparison implicit, while similes make the comparison explicit through the use of connectives like "as", "like", "than" and "when". If this lack of subtlety may make them less poetic, it makes the message they are passing more clear.
Needless to say, the simile is one of the oldest and most frequent tools in poetry and prose alike, being a valuable device to make art more descriptful, intimate, imaginative, evocative and entertaining. Keep in mind, however, that not every comparison is a simile: similes make a figurative comparison between two elements that may seem dissimilar at first, which means a character saying that a freezer is as cold as ice is just an observation at best.
Compare Talks Like a Simile for characters fond of using this figure of speech in-universe, and Dissimile for when a character's attempt at using similes ends up causing more trouble than it's worth.
See also Allegory, for when an entire narrative is supposed to metaphorically represent something else; Symbolism, for an element that represents different ideas and concepts; and Rhetorical Phrasing, for more figures of speech that help to make texts more vivid and understandable.