What is the different between an "analogy" and a "metaphor"?

Answer 1

people seems to be confusing "analogy" with "simile"

An analogy is a hyphothetical story presented to illustrate a point or concept by showing a comparsion.

A metaphor is using an image to replace a object. The phoenix to represent renewal, for instance.

Answer 2

The dictionary defines a "metaphor" as a figure of speech that uses one thing to mean another and makes a comparison between the two. For example, Shakespeare's line, "All the world's a stage," is a metaphor comparing the whole world to a theatre stage. Metaphors can be very simple, and they can function as most any part of speech. "The spy shadowed the woman" is a verb metaphor. The spy doesn't literally cast his shadow on the woman, but he follows her so closely and quietly that he resembles her own shadow.

An analogy is a bit more complicated. At the most basic level, an analogy shows similarity between things that might seem different -- much like an extended metaphor or simile. But analogy isn't just a form of speech. It can be a logical argument: if two things are alike in some ways, they are alike in some other ways as well. Analogy is often used to help provide insight by comparing an unknown subject to one that is more familiar. It can also show a relationship between pairs of things.

Answer 3

A metaphor is a way of describing something using a figure of speech, (in other words the description is 'not literal'). For example Shakespeare described jealousy as a 'green-eyed monster'. Depression might be described as 'a black cloud' for example.

An analogy is really an extended metaphor, which weaves a story around symbols. There are loads of these in the Bible, in the form of parables, using symbols and images which have the purpose of illustrating a particular message. Often an analogy can be used to make a difficult message more accessible.

The book 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell, is a classic example of an analogy, by using the story of farmyard animals to illustrate a wider message about communism.

Answer 4

An analogy is a story used to explain something complex in terms of something more familiar.

Example: In Physics, you can explain some features of electro magnetic waves by likening them to the movement in a rope being held at one end by a person and secured to a pole at the other. When the person moves the end of the rope, a wave travels down the rope towards the pole. Although the wave moves along the rope, the rope itself does not move any closer to the pole.

Simile: When one thing is likened directly to something else. Example: 'He was as proud as a tom-tit on a horse turd!'

Metaphor: When one thing is said to be another. As a previous answerer has mentioned, a good example is Shakespeare's 'All the world's a stage ...'

The difference between the last two is only in the use (or not) of words such as 'like' or 'as'. If Bill Shakespeare had written that the world is like a stage - then that would have been simile rather than metaphor.

I like this poem:

Very Like a Whale

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
thus hinder longevity.
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things.
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple
and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was
actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,
at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian
cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he
had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

-- Ogden Nash

Answer 5

An analogy is defined as a comparison based on such similarity and a metaphor is defined as a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison.

Answer 6

An analogy compares two things which are not similar but comparable, saying this is to that as that is to this while a metaphor states that one thing is another;real bad example:"life is but a passing day" or something like that.I hope you understand.

Answer 7

Analogy, compares one thing to another in some aspect.

Metaphor, takes an image to explain something that is hard to explain.

Answer 8

An "analogy" compairs one thing to another. example: Your strong as an ox. And a "metaphor" just says: "you old goat"