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Dictionary vs Metaphor - What's the difference?

dictionary | metaphor |

As nouns the difference between dictionary and metaphor

is that dictionary is a reference work with a list of words from one or more languages, normally ordered alphabetically and explaining each word's meaning and sometimes containing information on its etymology, usage, translations and other data while metaphor is (uncountable|figure of speech) the use of a word or phrase to refer to something that it isn’t, invoking a direct similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described, but in the case of english without the words like'' or ''as , which would imply a simile.

As a verb dictionary

is (label) to look up in a dictionary.

dictionary

English

Noun

(dictionaries)
  • A reference work with a list of words from one or more languages, normally ordered alphabetically and explaining each word's meaning and sometimes containing information on its etymology, usage, translations and other data.
  • *
  • But what other kind(s) of syntactic information should be included in Lexical Entries? Traditional dictionaries' such as Hornby's (1974) ''Oxford Advanced Learner's '''Dictionary of Current English'' include not only ''categorial'' information in their entries, but also information about the range of ''Complements which a given item permits (this information is represented by the use of a number/letter code).
  • By extension, any work that has a list of material organized alphabetically; e.g. biographical dictionary, encyclopedic dictionary.
  • (label) An associative array, a data structure where each value is referenced by a particular key, analogous to words and definitions in a physical dictionary.
  • * 2011 , Jon Galloway, ?Phil Haack, ?Brad Wilson, Professional ASP.NET MVC 3
  • User calls RouteCollection.GetVirtualPath, passing in a RequestContext, a dictionary of values, and an optional route name used to select the correct route to generate the URL.
    * (Citations dictionary)

    Synonyms

    * wordbook

    Derived terms

    * encyclopedic dictionary * explanatory dictionary * fictionary * pedagogical dictionary * Pictionary * pronunciation dictionary * subdictionary * translating dictionary * translationary

    See also

    * lexicon * encyclopedia * vocabulary

    Anagrams

    *

    Verb

    (en-verb)
  • (label) To look up in a dictionary.
  • (label) To add to a dictionary.
  • * 1866 , William Henry Ward, The international day, night, and fog signal telegraph (page 12)
  • By a reference to the following dictionaried abbreviations, the simplicity and harmony of each sentence will be manifestly apparent; although it does not embrace everything, and could not, as it would be far too voluminous for general use.
  • * 2001 , The Michigan Alumnus (page 25)
  • Should I use a word that a lot of people use but isn't in the dictionary? Uncle Phil would rather get a root canal than say he was scrapbooking, because the word isn't dictionaried .
  • To compile a dictionary.
  • * 1864 , Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (volume 96, page 334)
  • They [dictionary-makers] may have had their romance at home — may have been crossed in love, and thence driven to dictionarying ; may have been involved in domestic tragedies — who can say?
  • (label) To appear in a dictionary.
  • metaphor

    Noun

  • (uncountable, figure of speech) The use of a word or phrase to refer to something that it isn’t, invoking a direct similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described, but in the case of English without the words like'' or ''as , which would imply a simile.
  • * What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors''', metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are '''metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.'' — Friedrich Nietzsche, ''On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense , 1870, translated by Daniel Beazeale, 1979.
  • (countable, rhetoric) The word or phrase used in this way. An implied comparison.
  • Hypernyms

    * figure of speech

    Derived terms

    * dead metaphor * extended metaphor * malaphor * metaphorical * metaphorical extension * metaphoricity * metaphorism * stale metaphor

    See also

    * analogy * idiom * metonymy * simile