Definition of "simile" [sim•i•le]

• A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in "How like the winter hath my absence been” or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life” (Shakespeare). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "As an accident-prone person, I must say that I have never seen blood "shimmer" no matter which way the simile is arranged."
• "So in literature we have, springing from this principle of comparison, the forms fable, parable, and allegory; and in language the figures of speech which we know as simile and metaphor."
• "That particular simile is interesting since it seems they had some kind of Hawaiian themed party during this episode that ended up on the cutting room floor."