"metaphor" meaning in English

See metaphor in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˈmɛ.tə.fə/ [UK], /ˈmɛt.ə.fɔr/ [US] Audio: en-us-metaphor.ogg [US], LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-metaphor.wav [UK] Forms: metaphor [singular], metaphors [plural]
Head templates: {{noun}} [POS TABLE]
  1. A metaphor is a way of talking about one thing by using the language usually used for something else to show some kind of similarity between them.
    Sense id: simple-metaphor-en-noun-QBLpM7gW
     
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "metaphor",
      "tags": [
        "singular"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "metaphors",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
      "name": "noun"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": "me‧ta‧phor",
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "People often talk about brains using the metaphor of a computer."
        },
        {
          "text": "We say \"spend time\" because of the metaphor \"time is money\"."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A metaphor is a way of talking about one thing by using the language usually used for something else to show some kind of similarity between them."
      ],
      "id": "simple-metaphor-en-noun-QBLpM7gW",
      "raw_tags": [
        "countable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmɛ.tə.fə/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmɛt.ə.fɔr/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-metaphor.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-metaphor.wav",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "metaphor"
}

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "metaphor",
      "tags": [
        "singular"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "metaphors",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
      "name": "noun"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": "me‧ta‧phor",
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "Countable nouns"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "People often talk about brains using the metaphor of a computer."
        },
        {
          "text": "We say \"spend time\" because of the metaphor \"time is money\"."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A metaphor is a way of talking about one thing by using the language usually used for something else to show some kind of similarity between them."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "countable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmɛ.tə.fə/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmɛt.ə.fɔr/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-metaphor.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-metaphor.wav",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "metaphor"
}

Download raw JSONL data for metaphor meaning in English (0.9kB)

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-05 from the simplewiktionary dump dated 2025-04-03 using wiktextract (8c1bb29 and fb63907). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.