The Primary English Encyclopedia: The Heart of the Curriculum, Third Edition
See also poetry, simile, subject knowledge
Metaphor permeates our use of language and it is difficult to imagine speaking or writing without this enrichment. While a simile makes the comparison between phenomena fully explicit – ‘he fought like a lion’ or ‘she was as light as a fairy’ – a metaphor identifies two things with each other ‘he was the lion of the team’ or ‘she was the fairy in the group’.
So, in a metaphor, the qualities of the first thing carry over into the second.
In poetry metaphoric names for things are sometimes used. In a ‘kenning’, for example, compound words are used to name things. In Old English poetry we might come across ‘bone-house’ meaning body.
Although metaphors occur in prose, they are more common in poetry and enjoying poems is a good context for introducing and learning about metaphor. While very young children tend to become locked into literal meanings by age seven or eight most children’s thinking has become sufficiently flexible to understand metaphors.
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