Noun: simile
| Singular | simile |
| Plural | similes; similia |
Sample Sentences
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He made a simile of George the third to Nebuchadnezzar, and of the prince regent to Belshazzar, and insisted that the prince represented the latter in not paying much attention to what had happened to kings […] [1826, Thomas Bayly Howell, A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanours, volume 33:]
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The second was a fancy, which amounts to a mania, for similes, strung together in endless lists, and derived as a rule from animals, vegetables, or minerals, especially from the Fauna and Flora of fancy. [1887, George Saintsbury, “Early Elizabethan prose”, in A History of Elizabethan Literature:]
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What follows should be prefaced with some simile—the simile of a powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake—for it blew Philip up in the air and flattened him on the ground and swallowed him up in the depths. [1905, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, chapter 2, in Where Angels Fear to Tread, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, page 57:]
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My father is a quiet man / With sober, steady ways; / For simile, a folded fan; / His nights are like his days. [1925, Countee Cullen, Fruit of the Flower:]
Nouns inflected like simile
sedile,
simile,
miliarense,
rationale,
facsimile,
mesoeucrocodyle,
epicede,
aquamanile,
mare,
rete,
Etymology
From Latin simile (“comparison, likeness, parallel”) (first attested 1393), originally from simile, neuter form of similis (“like, similar, resembling”). Compare English similar. See: Latin Nouns '
simile', English Nouns '
similar'.