Simile is a trope which draws an imaginative comparison between the explicit tenor (T) and vehicle (V) foregrounding one or more points of resemblance, i. e. tertiumcomparationis (TC), the comparison being expressed by a special connective (C)
S. G. Darian offers the following matrix of distinctive features of simile: The air conditioner (T) at the window, soft (TC), like (C) the hum of men at prayer (V).
- T and V are unlike things.
- T and V have different referents.
- There is no direct or simple comparison of obvious similarities or likenesses.
- T and V share some semantic features (TC).
- Simile does not invole a total transfer of features.
- The simile contains a connective, С
- The two parts of a simile can be fitted into the paradigm T is like V.
- The connective, C, affirms that the relationship is an imaginary one, an appearance, a resemblance, rather than reality.
- V usually refers to a general rather than specific item, a museum, not the museum (48, 50).
TertiumComparationis. TC is sometimes stated by a special word, from almost any part of speech:
- Verb . .his nose curved like a switchback, with a knob at the end. (Woolf)
- Noun: I took on the project with the enthusiasm of a child going to his first haircut, (quoted in 48)
- Adjective. Jim stopped inside the door as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. (0. Henry)
- Adverb: Each of the lines stands sturdily like a tree, (quoted in 48)
D. U. Ashurova classifies similes into four groups depending on the nature of TC (the examples are quoted in this work):—
- Of quality: A woman moved is like fountain troubled: muddy, ill-seeming, bereft of beauty. (Shakespeare)
- Of action: The clerks in the office jumped about like sailors during a storm. (0. Henry)
- Of relation: Her anger dispersed before his humour like foam before a breeze. (Kleiser)
- Of analogy: As on the fingers of throned queen The basest jewel will be well esteemed, So are those errors that in thee are seen To truths translated and for true things deemed. (Shakespeare)
32. The difference between simile, metaphor and metonymy.
Simile is a trope which draws an imaginative comparison between the explicit tenor (T) and vehicle (V) foregrounding one or more points of resemblance, i. e. tertiumcomparationis (TC), the comparison being expressed by a special connective (C).
Metaphor is an imaginative identification of one concept (the tenor) with another (the vehicle) and the resultant breach of normal correspondence between concepts and words. There is no doubt that the basis of metaphor is the mental process of comparison, of „similation", but unlike in simile, in metaphor the overt ground of likeness is never verbalized.
Metonymy is a trope in which the name of a thing is replaced by the name of an associated, contiguous thing. Unlike metaphor where the interaction between tenor and vehicle is based on resemblance, metonymy reflects the actually existing relations between the tenor and the vehicle whose interaction is thus based on their contiguity.