Month: May 2008

Simile vs. Metaphor

Nouns, Prepositions, Versus

Many people confuse these two words.

Problem:
These two nouns are not synonyms.

Explanation:
A simile is a comparison of two unlike things using “like” or “as”.

The origin of the word “simile” is a Latin noun that means likeness.

A metaphor is a comparison that does not use “like” or “as”.

The origin of the word “metaphor” is a Greek verb that means to transfer.

So another way to think of a metaphor is that it acts like a symbol for something else.

Solution:
A comparison is a simile when it involve “like” or “as”; a metaphor never involves either of these prepositions.

“… Comcast will wave its early termination fee …”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Hyphens, Misspellings, Nouns, Verbs

I saw this in an April-23 article on the RCR Wireless News website.

Problems:
1. The verb is wrong.
2. A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
The missing hyphen is a common English blunder, but a simple rule tells us that the hyphen is required in a particular part of this expression.

Here is the rule: When an adjective (e.g., “early”) and a noun (e.g., “termination”) together modify another noun (“fee”), there should be a hyphen to join the adjective to the first noun — to create a “compound” modifier, if you will, of the second noun.

I am not sure how common the other English blunder is: writing “wave” where “waive” — which means to forgo or give up — is required.

However, I believe that both problems are consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to write “wave” than to write “waive”; it is simpler to omit a hyphen than to include one.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “waive the fee” — 106,000 matches
  • “wave the fee” — 1,790 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 59.2:1, which is heartening.

Solution:
“… Comcast will waive its early-termination fee …”