Noun

(en noun)

The act of comparing or the state or process of being compared.

:

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Old soldiers? , passage=Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine. The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless.}}

An evaluation of the similarities and differences of one or more things relative to some other or each-other.

:

* (1800-1859)

*:As sharp legal practitioners, no class of human beings can bear comparison with them.

*(Richard Chenevix Trench) (1807-1886)

*:The miracles of our Lord and those of the Old Testament afford many interesting points of comparison .

*

*:"I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim, "but I was at Winchester and New College." ¶ "That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse school till I was twelve."

With a negation, the state of being similar or alike.

:

(label) The ability of adjectives and adverbs to form three degrees, as in hot, hotter, hottest .

That to which, or with which, a thing is compared, as being equal or like; illustration; similitude.

*(Bible), (w) iv. 30

*:Whereto shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what comparison shall we compare it?

(label) A simile.

(label) The faculty of the reflective group which is supposed to perceive resemblances and contrasts.

Noun

(es)

The state or quality of being like or alike; similitude; resemblance; similarity.

Appearance or form; guise.

An enemy in the likeness of a friend.

* Genesis, I, 26

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness : and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

That which closely resembles; a portrait.

How he looked, the likenesses of him which still remain enable us to imagine.