A figure in rhetoric in which the meaning of one word is transferred onto and in a certain sense combined with that of another. It is constructed in the same manner as a simile, but the comparative terms ‘like’ and ‘as’ are removed. So instead of saying ‘that man behaves like a pig’ one says ‘that man is a pig’ and in so doing the attributes of the pig (generally the disagreeable ones) are transposed onto the man. Metaphors can also take extended forms, from a few a paragraphs to entire books---Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902), for instance, is often read as an extended metaphor for imperialism and its effects.