as in parable
a story intended to teach a basic truth or moral about life
Dr. Seuss's story "The Sneetches" is a telling allegory about tolerance for people's differences
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Recent Examples of allegory
If Çatak uses the accumulation of mundane details to portray the pressures on ordinary people, Alper uses the heightened language of myth and allegory to tell a story that nevertheless feels immediately recognizable as belonging to the present.
—
Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 26 Feb. 2026
An allegory for how De Sosa’s generation is leaving the world, the director says.
—John Hopewell, Variety, 13 Feb. 2026
Making art is the axis of every lyric here, and his catalogs incline also to allegory.
—Literary Hub, 29 Jan. 2026
Coogler's Jim Crow-era film -- the rare horror movie to win the academy's favor -- conjures a mythical allegory of Black life.
—Jake Coyle The Associated Press, Arkansas Online, 23 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for allegory
Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 26 Feb. 2026
An allegory for how De Sosa’s generation is leaving the world, the director says.
—John Hopewell, Variety, 13 Feb. 2026
Making art is the axis of every lyric here, and his catalogs incline also to allegory.
—Literary Hub, 29 Jan. 2026
Coogler's Jim Crow-era film -- the rare horror movie to win the academy's favor -- conjures a mythical allegory of Black life.
—Jake Coyle The Associated Press, Arkansas Online, 23 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for allegory
Recent Examples of Synonyms for allegory
Noun
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Coogan was poking fun at tech companies’ impulse to name themselves after myths and parables, even when those myths and cultural artifacts have negative associations.—
Diego Lasarte,
New Yorker,
25 Feb. 2026
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Plato’s prescient understanding of ICE agents arose during a discussion of the parable of the Ring of Gyges.—
Paul Rosenzweig,
Washington Post,
9 Feb. 2026
Noun
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Described as a political fable that combines elements of a crime thriller with epic tragedy, the plot of Minotaur sees a Russian corporate executives preparing to carry out mass layoffs, who discovers his wife is having an affair.—
Scott Roxborough,
HollywoodReporter,
18 Mar. 2026
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That lurid fable was followed by 2023’s Pictures of Ghosts, an impressionistic documentary that told the parallel stories of Mendonça Filho’s life in movies and Recife’s decaying cinemas.—
Michael Snyder,
The Atlantic,
13 Mar. 2026
Noun
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Jude relocates this tale of troubled conscience to present-day Cluj-Napoca, in Transylvania, and subjects it to a corrosively cynical twist.—
Justin Chang,
New Yorker,
27 Mar. 2026
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My confidence was further bolstered when Zenker informed me about Beau Miles, an adventure filmmaker known for documenting his self-experiments, who, back in 2020, when an entirely different disaster descended upon us, ate only beans for 40 days (191 cans to be exact)—and lived to tell the tale.—
Ayana Underwood,
Outside,
27 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Allegory.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/allegory. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.
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