Proverbial vs Metaphor - What's the difference?
proverbial | metaphor |
Of, resembling, or expressed as a proverb, , fable, or fairy tale.
* 1947 , (
Widely known; famous; stereotypical.
(euphemistic) Used to replace a word that might be considered unacceptable in a particular situation, when using a well-known phrase.
(euphemistic) The groin or the testicles.
(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.
As nouns the difference between proverbial and metaphor
is that proverbial is (euphemistic) used to replace a word that might be considered unacceptable in a particular situation, when using a well-known phrase 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 an adjective proverbial
is of, resembling, or expressed as a proverb, , fable, or fairy tale.proverbial
English
Adjective
(en adjective)transcript):
- Doris: You're making me feel like the proverbial stepmother.
- I grew up in a prefab house on Main Street in 1950s suburbia, the second and last child of a proverbial nuclear family.
Noun
(en noun)- I think we should be prepared in case the proverbial hits the fan.