Samuel Taylor Coleridge called metaphor “an act of the imagination,” whereas he relegated simile to “an act of fancy.” Photo from National Portrait Gallery, 1795. Public Domain Samuel Taylor Coleridge ...

No matter if you're in school or well past your days in English class, figures of speech are used every day in our lives. From songs and television shows to conversations and advertisements, we often ...

"Narcissus" by Caravaggio (c. 1598). Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain What is an allegory? An allegory (Greek, "a speaking about something else") is a complete and cohesive narrative, for ...

From a series of tubes to the information superhighway. is an investigations editor and feature writer covering technology and the people who make, use, and are affected by it. Since joining The Verge ...

Jan. 14-20 is Idiom Week, and today we thought we’d have a heart-to-heart about some strange phrases we use. Idioms, metaphors and similes are all types of figurative language. According to ...

The player kicked the ball. The patient kicked the habit. The villain kicked the bucket. The verbs are the same. The syntax is identical. The player kicked the ball. The patient kicked the habit. The ...

Do you know what 'free as a bird' and 'happy as a lark' mean? These are examples of 'similes' and we've explained this useful figure of speech below! Similes are expressions that use 'like' or 'as' to ...

"You have to win the battle against depression", "what counts is not surrendering" and "this is not a short road" are examples of conceptual metaphors typically used ...