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Word of the Day: Metaphor
Hello again, everybody.
The word that I have for you today is metaphor.
A metaphor is a way to describe someone or something by referring to something else that is similar.
Yes, this was going to be a boring post about a grammar term, but I’ve had a change of heart and decided to give you an example of a metaphor instead.
Life is a highway.
Now, before we get into it, I must tell you that Life is a Highway is also a song by the Canadian singer Tom Cochrane.
I’ve loved this song since I was a high school student.
I guess you could say that it has been the background song for the story of my life.
While I’m on it, another good background story for my life so far would be Roam by the B-52’s.
Let’s keep moving along, shall we?
The metaphor life is a highway compares a person’s life to a highway.
Everyone’s experience is different, but all lives have twists, turns and even some rocky sections.
All highways are different, too.
Some are slow and backed up with traffic where nothing moves fast; others are high-speed expressways where the traffic flows nicely, and accidents rarely slow things down.
Many drivers wish for long stretches of straight highway so that they can cruise along at top speed (or faster) and get where they’re going quickly.
But if you like driving, you like living and know that the straight stretches are dull.
People fall asleep on straight highways, veer off the road, crash into trees and die.
We need excitement in life just as we need bendy highways to keep us from falling asleep.
Get off the sofa, overcome your inertia and hit the road.
Now that I think about it, the metaphor should be life is like a bendy highway.
But it is what it is, and we’re all survivors.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 77.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.