as in analogies
an elaborate or fanciful way of expressing something
"it's raining cats and dogs" is just a colorful metaphor and not a meteorological announcement
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Recent Examples of metaphors
The uniqueness is his metaphors.
—
New York Times, 28 Apr. 2026
Green’s list of eerie parallels included two swimming-pool metaphors and a climactic injury in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes.
—Boris Kachka, The Atlantic, 24 Apr. 2026
Its celestial metaphors and soaring strings have earned Diamond certification by the RIAA and been covered by everyone from Taylor Swift to Luke Combs.
—Nate Sloan, Vulture, 16 Apr. 2026
What about forests, given my fondness for tree metaphors?
—Elena Megalos, Longreads, 31 Mar. 2026
Threads become metaphors for relationships—fragile yet resilient, personal yet interconnected.
—Olga Garcia-Mayoral, Miami Herald, 31 Mar. 2026
His appetite for complexity was increasingly indulged as a means of branding cities and institutions, and his novel forms were deployed as blunt metaphors to absorb and obscure contradictions rather than negotiate them in material and spatial terms.
—Julian Rose, Artforum, 26 Mar. 2026
Sports metaphors are often used to talk about leadership, O’Neil says, but there’s something unique to boxing that hits home for these senior-level women who, according to McKinsey research, often lack mentorship, sponsorship and overall corporate support to thrive.
—Jennifer Liu, CNBC, 25 Mar. 2026
The use of Boïto’s Mefistofele in Batman Begins turns the film and the opera into metaphors for each other.
—Scott Roxborough, HollywoodReporter, 15 Mar. 2026
New York Times, 28 Apr. 2026
Green’s list of eerie parallels included two swimming-pool metaphors and a climactic injury in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes.
—Boris Kachka, The Atlantic, 24 Apr. 2026
Its celestial metaphors and soaring strings have earned Diamond certification by the RIAA and been covered by everyone from Taylor Swift to Luke Combs.
—Nate Sloan, Vulture, 16 Apr. 2026
What about forests, given my fondness for tree metaphors?
—Elena Megalos, Longreads, 31 Mar. 2026
Threads become metaphors for relationships—fragile yet resilient, personal yet interconnected.
—Olga Garcia-Mayoral, Miami Herald, 31 Mar. 2026
His appetite for complexity was increasingly indulged as a means of branding cities and institutions, and his novel forms were deployed as blunt metaphors to absorb and obscure contradictions rather than negotiate them in material and spatial terms.
—Julian Rose, Artforum, 26 Mar. 2026
Sports metaphors are often used to talk about leadership, O’Neil says, but there’s something unique to boxing that hits home for these senior-level women who, according to McKinsey research, often lack mentorship, sponsorship and overall corporate support to thrive.
—Jennifer Liu, CNBC, 25 Mar. 2026
The use of Boïto’s Mefistofele in Batman Begins turns the film and the opera into metaphors for each other.
—Scott Roxborough, HollywoodReporter, 15 Mar. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for metaphors
Noun
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Klemperer also noticed how often Nazi propaganda used sports analogies and superlatives to make its point.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
27 Apr. 2026
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The storylines and analogies Brown uses vary in familiarity.—
Haley Sawyer,
Daily News,
4 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Sometimes the batteries on the trackers would run low, and McGovern’s team would need to remove and recharge the devices, before surreptitiously replacing them.—
Ed Caesar,
New Yorker,
30 Apr. 2026
-
In 2021, a critical vulnerability in Log4j—a logging library maintained by a handful of volunteers—exposed hundreds of millions of devices.—
Evan Johnson,
IEEE Spectrum,
30 Apr. 2026
Noun
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In those earlier pictures, metaphysical conceits became visual and dramatic gambits as the filmmakers set out to colonize the vast interior worlds of, respectively, the mind and the spirit.—
Justin Chang,
New Yorker,
6 Mar. 2026
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One of Yellow Letters’s most interesting conceits is that German cities play Turkish ones throughout.—
Bilge Ebiri,
Vulture,
26 Feb. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Metaphors.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/metaphors. Accessed 3 May. 2026.
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