GR translation: with edges fine and combed as rain
alice wellintown
alicewellintown at gmail.com
Sat Mar 16 17:06:07 CDT 2013
A simile, such as the one you've provided, is a type of metaphor, in
this case the simile is constructed with "as", though it can be made
with "like' as well, and without either.
Though most students are taught that a simile always uses one or the
other, this is false.
The comparison is all that is needed.
A non-simile metaphor or a metaphor that is not a similie will not
make the comparison but the claim, so if we take your example and
apply it to me, thus, "Alice is a box of rocks", we see that it is
not a matter of obscurity but of effect.
The former, yours, is surely more obscure, for it compares two
un-alike things as it wedges "as" or "like" betwixt them.
And, as "as" and "like" are given grammar's conscriptive usage, and
this obscures both from the vulgar tongue we are used to using, this
compounds, not obscures the matter.
The matter, as Hamlet tells Polonius, is words, words, words.
Nothing, as far as we know, is more prone to abscure turdity
scatalogically, than words.
> Dumb as a box of rocks.
>
> Metaphor.
>
> Why make this obscure?
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