Figures of speech come in many varieties, but the two most common, and the two that most concern us here, are metaphors and similes. Both involve comparison. In a simile, the comparison is made explicit by the use of a word such as as or like. In a metaphor, there is no explicit pointer to the fact that a comparison is being made.Consequently,His hair was as white as snow. My love is like a red, red rose. She dances like a pregnant camel. andYour face, my thane, is as a book where men / May read strange matters. are sentences that contain similes. Conversely,All flesh is grass. Love is a butterfly with gilded wings. My heart was dancing for joy. andI am in blood / Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er. are sentences that contain metaphors. (The latter, by the way, is also from Macbeth [3.4.135–137].)Two other devices deserve a very brief mention. Personification is a metaphorical use of language in which inanimate objects or animals are described as if they were human, as in:The Sun peeped over the edge of the world and looked around. Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration:If she was holding forth in New York, her voice would be heard in New Jersey, and probably in New Hampshire as well. Personification is unlikely to be used very frequently by the writer of ordinary, informative prose. Hyperbole is frequent in informal language (I had to wait ages; There's a mountain of work waiting for me in the office) but rare in serious writing. Both devices may have a place in what is nowadays probably one of the main repositories of figurative writing for effect: comedy.
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