A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things not using the word like or as. Metaphors can be powerful, but they can also be tricky to identify at times. This page contains 100 metaphor examples.
I have separated the metaphors on this page into two lists. The first list contains metaphors that are easier to comprehend and identify. We will call these “easy metaphors,” though they may not be easy to understand. The second list contains fifty metaphors that are more difficult to comprehend. We will call these “hard metaphors.” Another way to consider this would be as a list of metaphors for kids and adults. Without further preamble, here is the list of easy metaphors:
Metaphor Examples for Intermediate Readers
The slashes indicate line breaks.
- The detective listened to her tales with a wooden face.
- She was fairly certain that life was a fashion show.
- The typical teenage boy’s room is a disaster area.
- What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep.
- The children were roses grown in concrete gardens, beautiful and forlorn.
- Kisses are the flowers of love in bloom.
- His cotton candy words did not appeal to her taste.
- Kathy arrived at the grocery store with an army of children.
- Her eyes were fireflies.
- He wanted to set sail on the ocean of love but he just wasted away in the desert.
- I was lost in a sea of nameless faces.
- John’s answer to the problem was just a Band-Aid, not a solution.
- The cast on Michael’s broken leg was a plaster shackle.
- Cameron always had a taste for the fruit of knowledge.
- The promise between us was a delicate flower.
- He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone.
- He pleaded for her forgiveness but Janet’s heart was cold iron.
- She was just a trophy to Ricardo, another object to possess.
- The path of resentment is easier to travel than the road to forgiveness.
- Katie’s plan to get into college was a house of cards on a crooked table.
- The wheels of justice turn slowly.
- Hope shines–a pebble in the gloom.
- She cut him down with her words.
- The job interview was a rope ladder dropped from heaven.
- Her hair was a flowing golden river streaming down her shoulders.
- The computer in the classroom was an old dinosaur.
- Laughter is the music of the soul.
- David is a worm for what he did to Shelia.
- The teacher planted the seeds of wisdom.
- Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day
- Each blade of grass was a tiny bayonet pointed firmly at our bare feet.
- The daggers of heat pierced through his black t-shirt.
- Let your eyes drink up that milkshake sky.
- The drums of time have rolled and ceased.
- Her hope was a fragile seed.
- When Ninja Robot Squad came on TV, the boys were glued in their seats.
- Words are the weapons with which we wound.
- She let such beautiful pearls of wisdom slip from her mouth without even knowing.
- Scars are the roadmap to the soul.
- The quarterback was throwing nothing but rockets and bombs in the field.
- We are all shadows on the wall of time.
- My heart swelled with a sea of tears.
- When the teacher leaves her little realm, she breaks her wand of power apart.
- The Moo Cow’s tail is a piece of rope all raveled out where it grows.
- My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee.
- The clouds sailed across the sky.
- Each flame of the fire is a precious stone belonging to all who gaze upon it.
- And therefore I went forth with hope and fear into the wintry forest of our life.
- My words are chains of lead.
- But into her face there came a flame; / I wonder could she have been thinking the same?
Metaphor Examples for Advanced Readers
Here are fifty more challenging examples of metaphors. The slashes indicate line breaks.
- The light flows into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.
- Men court not death when there are sweets still left in life to taste.
- In capitalism, money is the life blood of society but charity is the soul.
- Whose world is but the trembling of a flare, / And heaven but as the highway for a shell,
- Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds, / Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds!
- So I sit spinning still, round this decaying form, the fine threads of rare and subtle thought.
- And swish of rope and ring of chain /
Are music to men who sail the main. - Still sits the school-house by the road, a ragged beggar sunning.
- The child was our lone prayer to an empty sky.
- Blind fools of fate and slaves of circumstance, / Life is a fiddler, and we all must dance.
- Grind the gentle spirit of our meek reviews into a powdery foam of salt abuse.
- Laugh a drink from the deep blue cup of sky.
- Think now: history has many cunning passages and contrived corridors.
- You are now in London, that great sea whose ebb and flow at once is deaf and loud,
- His fine wit makes such a wound that the knife is lost in it.
- Waves of spam emails inundated his inbox.
- In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee these votive wreaths of withered memory.
- He cast a net of words in garish colours wrought to catch the idle buzzers of the day.
- This job is the cancer of my dreams and aspirations.
- This song shall be thy rose, soft, fragrant, and with no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
- There, one whose voice was venomed melody.
- A sweetness seems to last amid the dregs of past sorrows.
- So in this dimmer room which we call life,
- Life is the night with its dream-visions teeming, / Death is the waking at day.
- Then the lips relax their tension
and the pipe begins to slide, /
Till in little clouds of ashes,
it falls softly at his side. - The olden days: when thy smile to me was wine, golden wine thy word of praise.
- Thy tones are silver melted into sound.
- Under us the brown earth / Ancient and strong, / The best bed for wanderers;
- Love is a guest that comes, unbidden, / But, having come, asserts his right;
- My House of Life is weather-stained with years.
- See the sun, far off, a shriveled orange in a sky gone black;
- Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race unseen by any.
- But the rare herb, Forgetfulness, it hides away from me.
- The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman
- Life: a lighted window and a closed door.
- Some days my thoughts are just cocoons hanging from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind.
- Men and women pass in the street glad of the shining sapphire weather.
- The swan existing is a song with an accompaniment.
- At night the lake is a wide silence, without imagination.
- The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume.
- The great gold apples of light hang from the street’s long bough, dripping their light on the faces that drift below, on the faces that drift and blow.
- From its blue vase the rose of evening drops.
- When in the mines of dark and silent thought / Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there,
- The twigs were set beneath a veil of willows.
- He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail, / Thinking that comfort was a fairy tale,
- O Moon, your light is failing and you are nothing now but a bow.
- Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, / A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.
- This world of life is a garden ravaged.
- And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear / Into the wintry forest of our life;
- My soul was a lampless sea and she was the tempest.
Common Core State Standards Related to Metaphor
Anchor Standards
View All CCSS Standards Related to MetaphorCCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.4 – Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.L.5 – Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
ELA Standards: Literature
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology (e.g., Herculean).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.6.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.7.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of rhymes and other repetitions of sounds (e.g., alliteration) on a specific verse or stanza of a poem or section of a story or drama.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.4 – Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.)
ELA Standards: Language
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.3.5 – Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships and nuances in word meanings.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.4.5a – Explain the meaning of simple similes and metaphors (e.g., as pretty as a picture) in context.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.4.5b – Recognize and explain the meaning of common idioms, adages, and proverbs.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.5.5a – Interpret figurative language, including similes and metaphors, in context.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.5.5b – Recognize and explain the meaning of common idioms, adages, and proverbs.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.6.5a – Interpret figures of speech (e.g., personification) in context.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.7.5a – Interpret figures of speech (e.g., literary, biblical, and mythological allusions) in context.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.8.5a – Interpret figures of speech (e.g. verbal irony, puns) in context.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.9-10.5a – Interpret figures of speech (e.g., euphemism, oxymoron) in context and analyze their role in the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.11-12.5a – Interpret figures of speech (e.g., hyperbole, paradox) in context and analyze their role in the text.
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Common Core Lesson and Unit Plans
Understanding Common Core State Standards
Jamie
/ October 18, 2016A metaphor is when you say a person,place, an animal or a thing is described as something else.
This website really does help you with metaphors and similes.
student
/ October 17, 2016May I ask for a metaphor about journalism. It would really help a lot. Thank you in advance
emma
/ October 17, 2016saved by the bell!!!!
Ashley
/ October 16, 2016Are both metaphors “The azure ocean’s lucent shores; I leave my mortal self below” and “What coin shall pay this debt of mine?”
Are those both metaphors? Both are by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Mr. Morton
/ March 27, 2017The second one definitely is.
Ross
/ October 16, 2016Hi
In relation to Jurassic Park, where dinasaurs were brought back from extinction to once again hunt and eat humans….could “A mirror of fear” be considered a metaphor?
Appreciate any assistance
RA
Mr. Morton
/ March 27, 2017Sure, it could be.
Tina
/ October 16, 2016Can you tell me a metaphor describing my life? Please
Mr. Morton
/ March 27, 2017That’s really better left to you.
ARK
/ October 13, 2016The occean of sorrows that he was forced to dive into was where he became the shark that fed on the fish innocent and unsuspecting….. Is the metaphor used rightly in this sentence??
Mr. Morton
/ March 27, 2017The sentence is a bit awkward, but you do have a metaphor in there.
Hermione
/ October 13, 2016Do you have a favourite or best metaphor? If you do, what is it?
Mr. Morton
/ March 27, 2017“Life is a bowl of cherries. You can have as many as you can carry.” – Daniel Johnston.
Jen
/ October 12, 2016I need one for a glue stick but can’t use the word glue stick. My son & I are struggling
tanya
/ October 12, 2016i need a metaphor for very much.
Jackie
/ October 12, 2016What metaphor can I use for hot, humid sweltering heat.
Clint lucas
/ October 7, 2016What about one for kill um with kindness
Mr. Morton
/ March 27, 2017That’s probably closer to hyperbole:
http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/figurative-language/figurative-language-examples/hyperbole-examples/
Julius namit
/ October 6, 2016Thank you .. for doing this..
Hadassah Pierre-Louid
/ October 5, 2016I have a project on metaphors. For the project we have to choose a metaphor, tell what it means and draw a picture explaining it. I don’t know what metaphor to do can you help me please?
Rita
/ October 4, 2016is”it’s white smiling pieces laugh loudly” a methaphor?
Mr. Morton
/ October 5, 2016I mean, it’s hard to tell without the context of the line, but it seems more like personification to me.
Gabby
/ October 4, 2016I need a metaphor for peeling paint!! My brain is empty!! HELP PLEASE!!
Mr. Morton
/ October 5, 2016I’d love to help you, but my thoughts are peeling paint on the dilapidated structure that is my brain.
Sara
/ October 4, 2016Is “Puppy that has been kicked too many times” a metaphore??
Mr. Morton
/ October 4, 2016Yikes. That’s awful. But, no, it’s is not. Not as you are using it, as a sentence fragment. Maybe, if the full context were something like: “He’s a puppy that’s been kicked too many times,” and he refers to a person or something else that is not a literal puppy.
carlene
/ October 3, 2016black against its saffron
what literary device is used
Mr. Morton
/ October 5, 2016Your example lacks the context necessary to answer your question.
TjoePjoe
/ September 29, 2016Hi!Is “The beast of my feelings awakened ” And “The monster of my emotions clawed my happiness in order to take the throne of my feelings ” metaphors?Either would do,im trying to help people with fear metaphors.Thanks!
Yuzuriha
/ September 29, 2016Hi!I also need advanced metaphors for happy/Jubilant.
Hope to hear a reply asap! Thanks 😀
Sorry for double comments
Yuzuriha
/ September 29, 2016Hi !I would really want to know a few metaphors for fear.Trying to do some descriptive writing.Thanks! 🙂
TjoePjoe
/ September 29, 2016The beast of my feelings came around
The monster clawed my bright side in order to claim it’s throne on my feelings
samson
/ September 28, 2016is a shape with a lion body and the head of a man a metaphor
Mathew
/ September 27, 2016Can I have some metaphors for a zombie apocalypse I need some for my story. Thanks
phenomenal
/ September 27, 2016what metaphor can i use to say something about my uncle
Dave
/ September 26, 2016would “I let my thoughts drift be a metaphor”
Mr. Morton
/ March 27, 2017Sure, but it could be extended to be more obvious.
John
/ September 26, 2016This helped me a lot thx
My teacher was going to
Send me to detention if I didn’t write a
lot of metaphors. So u really helped me and
I can see u helped other people too.
Brenda Cook
/ September 25, 2016Can u give me 10 metaphors about school?
honey
/ September 25, 2016hi. goodmorning. Can you give me one example of methaphorical sentence which related to education or learning? thanks.
dia
/ September 25, 2016does this metaphor make sense? “Tears are like a leaking faucet, slowly dripping, waiting for someone to turn on the tap.”
Mr. Morton
/ March 27, 2017No, mainly because it is a simile.
http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/figurative-language/figurative-language-examples/simile-examples/
Rene B. Encinas
/ September 23, 2016A metaphor for a person who is firm and authoritative and yet has a soft heart for family/personal matters…
Nigel
/ September 22, 2016L need a metaphor to filert with some l like
Meta Phor
/ September 20, 2016I need a metaphor representing a kid becoming an adult, any suggestions?
Briley Sewell
/ September 19, 2016This is a good source
Briley Sewell
/ September 19, 2016i need a metaphor to describe a good basketball player.
nompilo
/ September 18, 2016Hi, i’m looking for a metaphor that will describe my favourite teacher who was very dedicated to her work, whom I look up to as i’m going to be a teacher also.
Pineapple
/ September 17, 2016Is “my girlfriend was enchanted by my charm” a metaphor?
chela
/ September 14, 2016THANK YOU !!!!!!!!
Jordie
/ September 13, 2016Hey, I really need just one metaphor about music.. Could you help me?
Bitubatu
/ September 12, 2016Can you give me a simple example
Tracy
/ September 11, 2016Pls l need a metaphor to discibe myself .
I’m quiet but very friendly when you become my friend before you can know me
Liam
/ September 10, 2016hi I’m looking for a metaphor to describe a classroom? Can you help ?:)
Mr. Morton
/ September 10, 2016Sure. It’s a garden.
Fee
/ September 7, 2016hi there
i need a metaphor for my boyfriend making me feel special. preferably something involving stars or the universe, but any other suggestions are welcome 🙂
Mr. Morton
/ September 10, 2016How about something about him being your lone star in an otherwise bleak and empty sky?
Mathew
/ September 6, 2016Kerala, a beautiful and charming State in India is known as “God’s Own Country.”
Is this usage a Metaphor?
Sakthi
/ September 4, 2016can give me at least 10 metaphors based on sadness
Mr. Morton
/ September 10, 2016But what would you learn if I were to do your homework for you?
trent
/ August 24, 2016What a metaphor that could describe a good day
SYLPH
/ August 23, 2016Is this a metaphor “your bag weighs a ton”?
please. i really need help…..
Mr. Morton
/ August 24, 2016No, that is hyperbole, a different figurative language technique where the speaker uses exaggeration for effect.
http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/figurative-language/figurative-language-examples/hyperbole-examples/
SYdho
/ August 21, 2016HI!! I need a metaphor for a personality who is shy at first but when you get to know her she is really friendly and fun to be around. Thanks!
Gabby
/ August 9, 2016Thank you very much:) this is so very helpful
It helps to know metaphors more
gwapahonmaotay
/ August 6, 2016wow its good in the school perfect because this example this mataohor searching…
benette
/ August 5, 2016How can I use metaphor between two pictures?
students studying at library and a teacher teaching in a class room ? How can I make connections between the pictures? thank you so much and God bless