What is the difference between metaphor and hyperbole

Consider someone being taught to cook. You may start to teach them about pies by showing them double-crust pies with sweet fillings. Nothing you show them at that point will involve meat or other savoury fillings.

But nothing in any of that requires you to tell them that pies must have two crusts and sweet filling, or that a ground meat main dish can not be in pie form or have a crust.

The student has obviously progressed to the level where this needs to be addressed. But to give a simple and simply false answer is the worst kind of foolishness. And we see what results it gets. Everyone learns incomplete truths; everyone passes through areas of misunderstanding; everyone has to learn simple things before complex things.

I have to agree with you mate. Her neighbour was murdered and she goes on to describe how when this neighbour and her husband moved in to the estate, before she was obviously murdered, that they bought Ice Cream for their neighbours and made them Cookies funny I always thought that the existing neighbours done that for the new ones …LOL.

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Email Address:. Yes, please! Buy it at cafepress. Figures of speech A figure of speech is a phrase or an expression that expresses an idea by using words in a nonliteral and imaginative way.

Metaphors A metaphor is a word or phrase typically used to describe one thing but unexpectedly used to describe something different. Similes Tip: The final -e in simile is pronounced like —ee.

Hyperbole Hyperbole is language that describes something as better or worse than it really is. Vocabulary Quiz. Take the Quiz ».

Name That Thing. Take our visual quiz. Test Your Knowledge ». Learn More ». The play contains many other metaphors involving imperfect clothing, and they strengthen a thematic point of the work.

Macbeth uses murder as his way to ascend the Scottish royal ranks until he is king, and scholars often interpret the images of clothes that are tattered or too loose on Macbeth as Shakespeare's metaphorical message about how ill the various titles Macbeth holds fit him.

The repetition surrounding Macbeth's attire illustrates the literary term conceit, which is an extended literary metaphor. Another common kind of metaphor is simile , a comparison of two things using the word "as," "like" or "than.

For instance, the use of a chariot to represent the inevitable passage of time toward death dates to Greek mythology. In metaphors, something is mentioned as something else.

But in similes, it is said that something is like something else. Although similes are like metaphors, metaphors are not similes.

Personification is giving human qualities to a non-living thing, non-human, object or idea. Then it can be identified as a person. Hyperbole, meanwhile, is exaggerating something to show the depth of what is being said.

Thus, this is the key difference between simile metaphor personification and hyperbole. Below is a summary of the difference between simile metaphor personification and hyperbole in tabular form for side by side comparison.

These are figures of speech that add colour when speaking or writing.