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Metaphor vs Illusion - What's the difference?

metaphor | illusion |

As nouns the difference between metaphor and illusion

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 illusion is anything that seems to be something that it is not.

metaphor

English

(wikipedia 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

    illusion

    English

    (wikipedia illusion)

    Noun

  • (countable) Anything that seems to be something that it is not.
    • We saw what looked like a tiger among the trees, but it was an illusion caused by the shadows of the branches.
    Using artificial additives, scientists can create the illusion of fruit flavours in food.
  • * 2002 , (The Flaming Lips),
    • You realize the sun don't go down it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.
  • (countable) A misapprehension; a belief in something that is in fact not true.
    • Jane has this illusion that John is in love with her.
  • (countable) A magician’s trick.
  • (uncountable) The state of being deceived or misled.

    • Synonyms

    * (the state of being deceived or misled) misapprehension

    Derived terms

    * illusionist * illusory * optical illusion * under the illusion that

    See also

    * mirage ----