Metaphor Examples

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.

Metaphor
Comparing two unlike things WITHOUT using the word like or as.

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.

  1. The detective listened to her tales with a wooden face.
  2. She was fairly certain that life was a fashion show.
  3. The typical teenage boy’s room is a disaster area.
  4. What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep.
  5. The children were roses grown in concrete gardens, beautiful and forlorn.
  6. Kisses are the flowers of love in bloom.
  7. His cotton candy words did not appeal to her taste.
  8. Kathy arrived at the grocery store with an army of children.
  9. Her eyes were fireflies.
  10. He wanted to set sail on the ocean of love but he just wasted away in the desert.
  11. I was lost in a sea of nameless faces.
  12. John’s answer to the problem was just a Band-Aid, not a solution.
  13. The cast on Michael’s broken leg was a plaster shackle.
  14. Cameron always had a taste for the fruit of knowledge.
  15. The promise between us was a delicate flower.
  16. He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone.
  17. He pleaded for her forgiveness but Janet’s heart was cold iron.
  18. She was just a trophy to Ricardo, another object to possess.
  19. The path of resentment is easier to travel than the road to forgiveness.
  20. Katie’s plan to get into college was a house of cards on a crooked table.
  21. The wheels of justice turn slowly.
  22. Hope shines–a pebble in the gloom.
  23. She cut him down with her words.
  24. The job interview was a rope ladder dropped from heaven.
  25. Her hair was a flowing golden river streaming down her shoulders.
  26. The computer in the classroom was an old dinosaur.
  27. Laughter is the music of the soul.
  28. David is a worm for what he did to Shelia.
  29. The teacher planted the seeds of wisdom.
  30. Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day
  31. Each blade of grass was a tiny bayonet pointed firmly at our bare feet.
  32. The daggers of heat pierced through his black t-shirt.
  33. Let your eyes drink up that milkshake sky.
  34. The drums of time have rolled and ceased.
  35. Her hope was a fragile seed.
  36. When Ninja Robot Squad came on TV, the boys were glued in their seats.
  37. Words are the weapons with which we wound.
  38. She let such beautiful pearls of wisdom slip from her mouth without even knowing.
  39. Scars are the roadmap to the soul.
  40. The quarterback was throwing nothing but rockets and bombs in the field.
  41. We are all shadows on the wall of time.
  42. My heart swelled with a sea of tears.
  43. When the teacher leaves her little realm, she breaks her wand of power apart.
  44. The Moo Cow’s tail is a piece of rope all raveled out where it grows.
  45. My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee.
  46. The clouds sailed across the sky.
  47. Each flame of the fire is a precious stone belonging to all who gaze upon it.
  48. And therefore I went forth with hope and fear into the wintry forest of our life.
  49. My words are chains of lead.
  50. 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.

  1. The light flows into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.
  2. Men court not death when there are sweets still left in life to taste.
  3. In capitalism, money is the life blood of society but charity is the soul.
  4. Whose world is but the trembling of a flare, / And heaven but as the highway for a shell,
  5. Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds, / Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds!
  6. So I sit spinning still, round this decaying form, the fine threads of rare and subtle thought.
  7. And swish of rope and ring of chain /
    Are music to men who sail the main.
  8. Still sits the school-house by the road, a ragged beggar sunning.
  9. The child was our lone prayer to an empty sky.
  10. Blind fools of fate and slaves of circumstance, / Life is a fiddler, and we all must dance.
  11. Grind the gentle spirit of our meek reviews into a powdery foam of salt abuse.
  12. Laugh a drink from the deep blue cup of sky.
  13. Think now: history has many cunning passages and contrived corridors.
  14. You are now in London, that great sea whose ebb and flow at once is deaf and loud,
  15. His fine wit makes such a wound that the knife is lost in it.
  16. Waves of spam emails inundated his inbox.
  17. In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee these votive wreaths of withered memory.
  18. He cast a net of words in garish colours wrought to catch the idle buzzers of the day.
  19. This job is the cancer of my dreams and aspirations.
  20. This song shall be thy rose, soft, fragrant, and with no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
  21. There, one whose voice was venomed melody.
  22. A sweetness seems to last amid the dregs of past sorrows.
  23. So in this dimmer room which we call life,
  24. Life is the night with its dream-visions teeming, / Death is the waking at day.
  25. Then the lips relax their tension
    and the pipe begins to slide, /
    Till in little clouds of ashes,
    it falls softly at his side.
  26. The olden days: when thy smile to me was wine, golden wine thy word of praise.
  27. Thy tones are silver melted into sound.
  28. Under us the brown earth / Ancient and strong, / The best bed for wanderers;
  29. Love is a guest that comes, unbidden, / But, having come, asserts his right;
  30. My House of Life is weather-stained with years.
  31. See the sun, far off, a shriveled orange in a sky gone black;
  32. Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race unseen by any.
  33. But the rare herb, Forgetfulness, it hides away from me.
  34. The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman
  35. Life: a lighted window and a closed door.
  36. Some days my thoughts are just cocoons hanging from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind.
  37. Men and women pass in the street glad of the shining sapphire weather.
  38. The swan existing is a song with an accompaniment.
  39. At night the lake is a wide silence, without imagination.
  40. The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume.
  41. 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.
  42. From its blue vase the rose of evening drops.
  43. When in the mines of dark and silent thought / Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there,
  44. The twigs were set beneath a veil of willows.
  45. He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail, / Thinking that comfort was a fairy tale,
  46. O Moon, your light is failing and you are nothing now but a bow.
  47. Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, / A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.
  48. This world of life is a garden ravaged.
  49. And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear / Into the wintry forest of our life;
  50. My soul was a lampless sea and she was the tempest.

Common Core State Standards Related to Metaphor

Anchor Standards

CCSS.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.

View All CCSS Standards Related to Metaphor
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

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506 Comments

  1. Levie

     /  June 3, 2018

    is ‘Fishing in a sea without water’ is a methapor?

    Reply
    • It could be. It depends on how it’s applied. More context is necessary to determine whether the speaker is literally fishing or not.

      Reply
  2. MATTHEW

     /  May 31, 2018

    Is “Education the key to life” a metaphor

    Reply
    • Yes, as education is not a literal key. It is implicitly being compared to one without using the word like or as.

      Reply
  3. school poem

     /  May 17, 2018

    whats a metaphor for weird

    Reply
  4. ishmeet

     /  May 8, 2018

    my eyes are flaming hot. is that a metaphor

    Reply
  5. Saad

     /  May 1, 2018

    Is this a metaphor Eyes so blue they put the summers sky to shame.and Dark tendrilos of desperation entangled my mind.Plz reply via email.

    Reply
  6. Heer

     /  November 28, 2017

    Is this sentence a metaphor?
    ” Hunger chased after the lonely hunter. “

    Reply
  7. Hi it’s me

     /  November 27, 2017

    Is “ She had a stream of wavy brown hair which flowed down her shoulders.” be a metaphor?

    Reply
  8. Hannah

     /  November 26, 2017

    Hi this is hannah…Plsss give me an example of methapor for a song

    Ex:
    I’m the rainbow of your love
    I’m the light in your life
    You are the tree of my soul
    You are the torch through my life

    Reply
  9. Lenyir ronya

     /  September 15, 2017

    I will write a letter to his mother that will open her eyes as wide as a gate

    Reply
  10. Aaratrika Ghosh

     /  August 28, 2017

    Is ” The boy was as skinny that he could pass through a keyhole ” a metaphor ?

    Reply
  11. Walter

     /  August 19, 2017

    thanks guys

    Reply
  12. Joel

     /  August 7, 2017

    Is the sentence:
    Sometimes there are clouds of gloom.
    A metaphor?

    Reply
  13. Ervinjames

     /  August 1, 2017

    Your eyes are windows of my soul

    Reply
  14. micaella

     /  July 5, 2017

    Thankyou for helping me ! my Teacher says my work is Very good! Thankyou very much!

    Reply
  15. Simon

     /  June 15, 2017

    Does Relief washes over me count as a metaphor, or what is it?

    Reply
  16. jennifer

     /  June 12, 2017

    is; peace is pure gold, highly valuable

    Reply
  17. mindy

     /  June 12, 2017

    can you give me a metaphor example that describe grungy?

    Reply
  18. Marianna

     /  May 24, 2017

    What is a metaphor?

    Reply
    • A metaphor is a comparison between two dissimilar things that does not use the word “like” or “as.”

      Reply
    • micaella

       /  July 5, 2017

      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.

      Reply
  19. Janie Primero

     /  May 22, 2017

    Is this a metaphor?

    Water is a far healthier alternative to drinking Coca Cola- an alternative that our own Mother Nature bestowed on us as a gift – as an essence of life?

    Reply
  20. edudecangame776

     /  May 18, 2017

    is you burned down all of my bridges one?

    Reply
  21. anonymous

     /  May 16, 2017

    her face was like diamonds a metaforeeeeee?

    Reply
  22. gabrielle

     /  April 15, 2017

    are shooting stars falling down her face a metaphor

    Reply
  23. Nus.

     /  April 15, 2017

    I want to know the difference between standards and other types of metaphors ?

    Reply
    • I only know of implicit and explicit metaphors. I am unfamiliar with “standards” as they pertain to a type of metaphor.

      Reply
  24. Hugo

     /  April 5, 2017

    Is “Raindrops poured down his face” a metaphor?

    Reply
  25. J.R. Hollister

     /  April 1, 2017

    “In life, it’s not where you go, it’s who you travel with.” That, to me, is a maxim, adage, axiom, bromide or something else. But, could it be a metaphor for marriage as well?

    Reply
    • I suppose if we are comparing spending one’s life with another person to travel, then, yes, it is an implicit metaphor.

      Reply
  26. hij

     /  March 23, 2017

    Very helpful metaphors!!

    Reply
  27. Ariel

     /  March 23, 2017

    Is “The prairie was an ocean of grass.” A metaphor?

    Reply
  28. prinae poll

     /  March 22, 2017

    Her teeth is really white that her smile’s blinded me.. Is that a metaphor??

    Reply
  29. mw

     /  March 1, 2017

    would “it’s raining cats and dogs” be a metaphor?

    Reply
  30. Atiya

     /  February 20, 2017

    josh face was boiling hot is that a metaphor?

    Reply
  31. susen

     /  February 6, 2017

    outstand websight, gave me every thing I needed to know!!!

    Reply
  32. anonymous

     /  February 1, 2017

    It is a metaphor Montana Rose

    Reply
  33. iqra

     /  January 23, 2017

    this webesite rocks it really helped with my english and lit!!

    Reply
  34. iqra

     /  January 23, 2017

    “time flew by”
    is that a metephor?

    Reply
    • iqra

       /  January 23, 2017

      “the flowers danced in the wind” is that like a good metephor or is it even a metephor i am not sure????

      Reply
      • That one sounds a little bit more like personification, but I understand how it could be interpreted as a metaphor.

        Reply
    • I think so. It’s a pretty common expression though, so some people might call it an idiom.

      Reply
  35. James

     /  January 19, 2017

    Would “We tried to stay young, by chasing the sun.” Be a metaphor?

    Reply
  36. Grade seven student:

     /  January 19, 2017

    Okay so I’m doing a “My favourite thing” page long story. I need some tips if anyone can help? It’s already due but I’m staying home today so this is what I will do. Here it is;

    “War scythes are my one favourite weapon in war with it’s blade that looks like it could kill with one swing. It originated from a gardening tool, that looks like a cat hunting a mouse in the fields. The cold metal blade looks like the head of a predator waiting to strike, with the staff being the body to help it hunt. Its image was sorrow death from the Grim reaper.”

    That’s what I got so far.

    Reply
  37. me

     /  January 9, 2017

    if I was trying to do a metaphor describing the wind would “The wind was as strong as a hammer”

    Reply
  38. Kamahl

     /  December 1, 2016

    Will be a great enhancer to my 11 year old granddaughter who has a gift of expression .

    Reply
  39. Munti

     /  December 1, 2016

    Thnx a lott this site has helped me a lot with my work

    Reply
  40. Anaihdesor

     /  November 3, 2016

    Thanks for the information!!¡!!!!!!!

    Reply
  41. Tincanmerlin

     /  October 31, 2016

    I got this text:

    “A metaphor: my text about how I feel should have been sent straight, with no chaser.”

    Is it really a metaphor?

    Reply
  42. Jim Douglas

     /  October 31, 2016

    Is ” Run Forest Run ” a Metaphor or a Glamaphore

    Reply
  43. Montana Rose

     /  October 24, 2016

    is “the smoke was an alternative to a deathtrap.”

    is that a metaphor??

    Reply
  44. vanessa

     /  October 24, 2016

    Is “we all walked away Into the clouds”
    a metaphor

    Reply
  45. EDMOND

     /  October 24, 2016

    Metaphor in English is very close to metaphor in Chinese, but in metaphor, there is no rhetorical means such as hidden or comparisons.

    Reply
  46. Lexy

     /  October 20, 2016

    I’m writing a vignette and can’t figure out a metaphor for this one part-I’m tying to talk about a beautiful design. Do you have any ideas?
    (Thank you so much)

    Reply
  47. Person

     /  October 20, 2016

    Thanks for the examples very helpful

    Reply
  48. Aqsa Baig

     /  October 20, 2016

    Salam
    Can you plz tell me easy technique to use metaphors in my writing as i am a css aspirant so i ve to do debate on all the dimensions like education,democracy and many more.Kindly help me.I am searching from many days but didn’t get guideline related to my field.

    Reply
  49. sadia

     /  October 19, 2016

    is this a metaphor?
    I always wished that I was a olympic runner, so fast, so I can escape from the world

    Reply
    • Seems like hyperbole. I mean, there’s no way to run away from the world, so it’s a bit of an exaggeration. “World” in your passage is an example of synecdoche, where the larger “world” represents specific individuals and problems. Best wishes!

      Reply
  50. Obrain Hatontola

     /  October 19, 2016

    Hi…i have enjoyed your site…well, can i use a metaphor when summarising an application letter. plz give examples

    Reply

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