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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Key Examples in The Way of the World
Act 1, Scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Coroner's Inquest:
In Act 1, Scene 1, Fainall describes the "cabal night" (basically a gossip party) where he imagines Mirabell must have been humiliated the night before. Fainall uses a simile and striking imagery to describe the social dynamic at these parties:
[L]ast night was one of their cabal nights; they have ’em three times a week, and meet by turns at one another’s apartments, where they come together like the coroner’s inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.
Related Themes:
Act 1, Scene 5
Explanation and Analysis—Medlar and Crab:
In Act 1, Scene 5, Fainall uses a simile to describe Witwoud and Sir Wilfull Witwoud in relation to each other:
Unlock with LitCharts A+MIRABELL: Pray, are the follies of this knight-errant and those of the squire his brother anything related?
FAINALL: Not at all; Witwoud grows by the knight, like a medlar grafted on a crab. One will melt in your mouth, and t’other set your teeth on edge; one is all pulp, and the other all core.
MIRABELL: So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will be rotten without ever being ripe at all.
Related Themes:
Act 2, Scene 7
Explanation and Analysis—Windmill Love:
In Act 2, Scene 7, Mirabell has a soliloquy after Millamant leaves him alone onstage. He uses an elaborate simile to describe what it is like to be a man in love with a woman:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A fellow that lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodged in a woman. There is no point of the compass to which they cannot turn, and by which they are not turned; and by one as well as another, for motion, not method is their occupation. To know this, and yet continue to be in love, is to be made wise from the dictates of reason, and yet persevere to play the fool by the force of instinct.
Related Themes:
Act 3, Scene 10
Explanation and Analysis—Wearing Fools:
In Act 3, Scene 10, Millamant and Marwood develop an elaborate simile-turned-metaphor comparing acquaintances to clothing:
Unlock with LitCharts A+MILLAMANT: Well, ’tis a lamentable thing, I’ll swear, that one has not the liberty of choosing one’s acquaintance as one does one’s clothes. [...] I could consent to wear ’em, if they would wear alike, but fools never wear out – they are such drap-du-Berry things, without one could give ’em to one’s chambermaid after a day or two.
Related Themes:
