implied comparison achieved through a figurative use of words; the word is used not in its literal sense, but in one analogous to it. Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. Shakespeare, Macbeth . . . while he learned the language (that meager and fragile thread . . . by which the little surface corners and edges of men's secret and solitary lives may be joined for an instant now and then before sinking back into the darkness. . . ) Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. W. Churchill