means A figure of speech that describes one thing as if it were another, asserting a likeness without the hedging 'like' or 'as.'

from From Greek 'metaphora,' literally a 'carrying over,' built from 'meta-' (across) and 'pherein' (to carry) — the same 'pherein' that gives us '-phore' words and is a distant cousin of English 'bear.' The Greeks were marvelously literal about it: in modern Greece, the moving vans that haul your furniture across town still read 'METAPHORA' on the side. Every metaphor is, in the original sense, freight — meaning lifted from one place and carried over to another.