Metaphor vs Ambiguity - What's the difference?
metaphor | ambiguity |
(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.
(countable) Something, particulary words and sentences, that is open to more than one interpretation, explanation or meaning, if that meaning etc cannot be determined from its context.
(uncountable) The state of being ambiguous.
As nouns the difference between metaphor and ambiguity
is that metaphor is 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 while ambiguity is something, particulary words and sentences, that is open to more than one interpretation, explanation or meaning, if that meaning etc cannot be determined from its context.metaphor
English
(wikipedia metaphor)Noun
Hypernyms
* figure of speechDerived terms
* dead metaphor * extended metaphor * malaphor * metaphorical * metaphorical extension * metaphoricity * metaphorism * stale metaphorSee also
* analogy * idiom * metonymy * simileambiguity
English
(wikipedia ambiguity)Noun
- His speech was made with such great ambiguity that neither supporter nor opponent could be certain of his true position.