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Metaphor vs Semaphore - What's the difference?

metaphor | semaphore |

As nouns the difference between metaphor and semaphore

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 semaphore is any visual signaling system with flags, lights, or mechanically moving arms.

As a verb semaphore is

to signal using (or as if using) a semaphore.

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

    semaphore

    English

    (wikipedia semaphore)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Any visual signaling system with flags, lights, or mechanically moving arms.
  • * 2008 , Gene Weingarten, Old Dogs: Are the Best Dogs , Simon & Schuster, page 4 [http://books.google.com/books?id=GOUMoGLf9tYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=gene+weingarten&source=bl&ots=BgRdWbPGYP&sig=gd-Mgu3cNEgerci0w2psNOA6ZjM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GDIVUNqbDcOYqAGZx4HgBQ&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=semaphore&f=false]:
    • Consider the wagging tail, the most basic semaphore in dog/human communication.
  • A visual system for transmitting information by means of two flags that are held one in each hand, using an alphabetic and numeric code based on the position of the signaler’s arms.
  • (computing) A bit, token, fragment of code, or some other mechanism which is used to restrict access to a shared function or device to a single process at a time, or to synchronize and coordinate events in different processes.

    • Verb

    (semaphor)
  • (intransitive) To signal using (or as if using) a semaphore.
  • * 1990 , (Peter Hopkirk), The Great Game , Folio Society 2010, p. 425:
    • Minutes later, unseen by the defenders, he semaphored back across the valley that he was going to make a fresh attempt.