What Is a Simile? Parts, Types and Why Poetry Is Different

What is a simile?

A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things which share a quality, likening the one in which the quality is weaker to the one in which it is stronger. In Turkish it is called benzetme, or by its older name teşbih. Turkish school sources stress that it appears in poetry and in everyday speech alike, and that its basic purpose is to make expression concrete and stronger (Türk Edebiyatı, "Teşbih (Benzetme) Sanatı Nedir?").

A simple example: "The sheets in the garden swelled like sails." Sheets and sails both swell in the wind, but swelling is the more pronounced quality of a sail. The simile lends the sheets that quality of the sail.

The four parts of a simile

• The thing compared (Turkish benzeyen; English tenor): the thing with the weaker quality, the one being described. In the example, "the sheets".
• The thing it is compared to (kendisine benzetilen; vehicle): the thing with the stronger quality. In the example, "sails".
• The shared quality (benzetme yönü; ground): what the two have in common. In the example, "swelling".
• The comparison word (benzetme edatı): the word that sets up the link: like, as, as if, as though.

The first two are the core parts; the shared quality and the comparison word are supporting parts and can be dropped. The English terms tenor and vehicle were proposed by I. A. Richards in 1936; the shared quality is called the ground (Richards 1936; Pilten Ufuk 2016).

At a glance: four types of simile

The Turkish school tradition divides similes into four types according to which parts are present (Pilten Ufuk 2016, following Dilçin). Writing one image in all four makes the difference easy to see:

The names vary slightly between sources: the full type is also called "detailed", the bare type "eloquent". In English, a comparison without "like" or "as" is usually called a metaphor, so the last two types would normally be counted as metaphors; the Turkish tradition still counts them as similes because both core parts remain.

Simile vs metaphor

If one of the core parts also drops out, what remains is no longer a simile but a metaphor (Turkish istiare). In "White sails were swelling in the garden" the sheets are never named; the reader sees only the sails and works out from context that they are sheets. A metaphor in which only the vehicle is stated is called an explicit metaphor in the Turkish tradition.

The distinction is very old. In the third book of the Rhetoric (III.4, 1406b) Aristotle gives the example of Achilles: if the poet says he leapt on the foe "as a lion", it is a simile; if he says "the lion leapt", it is a metaphor. For Aristotle the difference is slight; a simile is a metaphor with the explanation added.

"Like" is not always a simile

The easiest way to find a simile is to look for the comparison word, but the same words do other jobs too. Turkish grammar sources list separate functions for gibi ("like") and sanki ("as if") (Türk Edebiyatı, "Benzetme Edatı Nedir?"), and English "like" works in a similar way:

• Prediction: "It looks like snow tonight." Snow is not being likened to anything; the speaker is stating a likelihood.
• Wanting: "I feel like a walk." Here "like" means "want".
• Example: "Herbs like thyme and mint." Here "like" means "such as".
• Same-kind comparison: "Her daughter is a pharmacist, like her mother." Both sides are of the same kind and the quality is literally true of both; this is a comparison, not a simile.

In a simile the two sides are of different kinds, and the quality being transferred is more pronounced in the vehicle. This is why a tool that scans for comparison words, such as the Scene Checker, can only point out candidates; whether a flagged "like" is a simile is decided by the reader. The other tools are on the Objective Projection Tools page.

What is the Exclusion of Similes, and why only for prose scenes?

Objective Projection has two constitutional rules: the Emotion Embargo and the Exclusion of Similes. The Exclusion of Similes leaves explicit similes out of prose scenes. The reason is that a simile moves the reader's eye away from the object in the scene to a different object: the reader sees the sail, not the sheet; the branch, not the hand. The method suggests staying with the scene's own objects. Let us look at one moment in two versions. First, the one with similes:

The shop was as silent as a grave. Hüsnü's hands shook like dry branches; pulling down the shutter, it was as if he were closing forty years.

Now the same moment without similes:

The only sound in the shop was the ticking of the wall clock. Hüsnü got the key into the lock on the third try. The shutter chain slipped from his hand twice; the third time he held the chain with both hands and the shutter came all the way down. On the window glass, the mark of a price tag removed years ago stayed behind.

The first version hands the reader a ready verdict: a grave, dry branches, a life being closed. The second carries the same weight in the scarcity of sound and the movement of a hand; the reader builds the verdict. At the planning stage these two details can be thought of through the Acoustic Impedance and Kinetic Momentum dimensions; this pairing is a suggestion, and the dimension names never appear in the text (Output Layer). For the place of description in this choice, see the article on objective and subjective description.

Why are similes legitimate in poetry?

The Exclusion of Similes is not a rule for poetry. This is a limit the method sets on itself; the same limit is drawn in the article on imagery. In poetry the simile is one of the form's basic tools: a line links one image to another in a small space, and that link is itself what the poem says. In the same chapter Aristotle writes that similes are useful in prose too, but should be used sparingly, because they are poetic by nature (Rhetoric III.4).

Let us carry Hüsnü's evening into three lines:

The shutter comes down
like an eyelid
over the street.

Here, removing the simile breaks the lines, because the lines exist to make the link between the shutter and the eyelid. In a story scene the same simile would take the reader's eye from the shop to a face. The rule respects this difference: what is left out of a prose scene belongs in a poem.

Prose has two grey areas as well. The first is dialogue: a character saying "This house is like an icebox" is that character's voice; this article suggests that similes in dialogue could fall outside the rule, but the suggestion is untested. For how speech is attributed, see the article on dialogue tags. The second is fixed similes: "cold as ice" or "quiet as a mouse" no longer bring a fresh image to most readers. Whether they move the reader's eye out of the scene is a separate question. The choice of simile also shapes a text's tone; that topic is covered in the article on tone and mood.

Why do similes look easy to count?

In the doctrine's reliability study, the Exclusion of Similes was defined as the absence of explicit simile markers in the narration (Turkish gibi, sanki, adeta) (Bulut 2026). In the first study of 120 scenes, the methodology's founder marked two similes; a rule-based detector marked the same two (κ = 1.00). In the second study of 100 scenes, an independent human rater marked one simile; the detector did not mark it (κ = 0.00).

Interpretation: The two studies contain three similes in total. With so few cases, an agreement coefficient says very little; the article on inter-annotator agreement explains why. Defining the rule only through comparison words keeps the tool simple, but leaves reinforced and bare similes, and metaphor, outside its scope. This article does not know which type the simile missed in the second study was. Whether translation adds similes is a separate question, treated as a hypothesis in the article on sensory details in translation. For the historical background of the rule, see from Aristotle to the present: a history of narrative theory.

What the doctrine cannot say here

• It cannot say that a simile-free scene reaches the reader more strongly; there is no reader data on this.
• It cannot say that similes are a fault in poetry or in any other form.
• It cannot say for certain that similes in dialogue should fall outside the rule; this is a suggestion.
• It cannot say whether fixed similes still work on readers as fresh images.
• It cannot say that a tool can decide whether a "like" is a simile; that decision belongs to the reader.
• It cannot decide which type names an exam will ask for.

Limitations

The examples are original and few; the four types are shown through a single image. Type names vary slightly between sources. The reliability figures rest on very few simile cases, and each study had a single human rater. The doctrine's terms and sources are listed in Levent Bulut's knowledge graph; the list of publications is on the Levent Bulut corpus page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a simile?

A simile likens a thing that has a quality weakly to another thing that has the same quality strongly. In "The sheets swelled like sails", the sheets are likened to sails in their swelling.

What are the four parts of a simile?

The thing compared (tenor), the thing it is compared to (vehicle), the shared quality (ground) and the comparison word. The first two are core parts; the shared quality and the comparison word are supporting parts and can be dropped.

What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?

A simile keeps both core parts, the thing compared and the thing it is compared to. If one of them drops out, it becomes a metaphor. "The sheets were like sails" is a simile; "White sails were swelling in the garden" is a metaphor.

Is every "like" a simile?

No. "Like" can also express prediction ("it looks like snow"), wanting ("I feel like a walk"), example ("herbs like thyme") and same-kind comparison ("a pharmacist, like her mother"). In a simile the two sides are of different kinds and the transferred quality is more pronounced in the vehicle.

Why does Objective Projection exclude similes, and does that apply to poetry?

The Exclusion of Similes applies only to prose scenes: a simile is left out because it moves the reader's eye from the object in the scene to a different object. It is not a rule for poetry; in poetry the simile is one of the form's basic tools. The rule's effect on readers has not been tested.

References

• Aristotle. Rhetoric, Book III, chapter 4 (1406b). Trans. W. Rhys Roberts.
• Bulut, Levent. Inter-Rater Reliability of LLM and Rule-Based Annotation for Inferential Narrative Features: Three Studies on a Turkish Corpus. Zenodo, 2026. doi:10.5281/zenodo.21740239. arXiv:2609.13936.
• Pilten Ufuk, Şahru. "Çağdaş Türk Edebiyatında Yeni Bir Benzetme Kategorisi: Ritmik Benzetmeler" [A New Category of Simile in Modern Turkish Literature: Rhythmic Similes]. Türkbilig, 2016/31, pp. 171–188.
• Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press, 1936.
• Türk Edebiyatı. "Teşbih (Benzetme) Sanatı Nedir? Özellikleri, Türleri, Örnekler." turkedebiyati.org. Accessed 8 November 2026.
• Türk Edebiyatı. "Benzetme Edatı Nedir? Benzetme Edatları, Örnekleri, Özellikleri." turkedebiyati.org. Accessed 8 November 2026.

Citation

@misc{bulut2026simile,
  author       = {Bulut, Levent},
  title        = {What Is a Simile? Parts, Types and Why Poetry Is Different},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://leventbulut.com/what-is-a-simile-simile-vs-metaphor/}},
  note         = {leventbulut.com}
}