Apa itu Simile dalam Bahasa Inggris

It’s dinnertime and my mother is busy as a bee in the kitchen.  She has a lot of cooking to do. Although my brother Pete is thin as a reed, he can eat like a horse!

The lines above have some special expressions: as busy as a bee, thin as a reed, eat like a horse. These expressions compare a person or a situation to something else, and tell you more about that person or a situation. These expressions are called similes.

Let’s look at them in detail.

Mother is busy as a bee. If you’ve seen a bee at work, you know it’s always buzzing about and working hard, without a moment’s rest. Mother is doing the same in the kitchen. So she is as busy as a bee.

Pete is thin as a reed, but he eats like a horse. A reed is a stalk of grass, and we all know how thin one single stalk of grass is! Pete is not really as thin as that, but this is just a way of saying that he is thinner than most people. He eats like a horse, and if you’ve ever seen a horse eating, you’ll know that horses like to eat quite a lot.

It’s easy to spot a simile in a sentence. The simile usually begins with “like _____” or looks like this “as ______ as _____.” Some examples:

• Like sunshine
• Like a fairytale
• Like a pig

Or

• As slow as a snail
• As sharp as a knife
• As cold as ice

When you look at a full sentence or paragraph, you’ll be able to understand the meaning of a simile easily. Let’s try with one example.

When I woke up on my birthday, my mother surprised me with a cake, a gift, and a trip to the beach! It was like a fairytale!

Lots of nice and unexpected things happened on my birthday, so “like a fairytale” means very nice and magical.

When the teacher asked our class what the capital of Bahrain was, everyone was quiet as a mouse.

Mice are very quiet creatures usually, and you could have one in the room and not know it is there at all! The students were all as quiet as that, because nobody knew the answer!

So now we have a good idea of what similes are, and how they work. Remember these things about similes:

• They give us information about a person, thing or situation by comparing it to something else
• They often begin with “like ____” or “as ____ as _____”
• They are quite direct and become easier to understand when we read the whole sentence or passage.

My shoes were as white as snow when I bought them, but now they’re as brown as a bear! I know I must clean them, but I’m as lazy as a pig!

Let’s talk some more about similes, and especially the ones that begin with “as.” We have three of them here. Let’s look at them again.

• As white as snow
• As brown as a bear
• As lazy as a pig

You will notice that this type of simile has four parts.

1.    the word “as”

2.    an adjective (big. small, nice, naughty, red, slow and many more)

3.    the word “as” again

4.    a noun or group of words which are commonly associated with the adjective mentioned earlier (house, mouse, angel, devil, blood, snail etc.)

What adjectives go with snow? Cold, white, and soft. All these are used in similes:

as cold as snow/as white as snow/as soft as snow.

Let’s think about the pig now. What do we commonly describe pigs as? Lazy, greedy, and dirty are common adjectives used for pigs. All these are also similes: as lazy as a pig, as greedy as a pig, as dirty as a pig.

Sometimes, when we’re trying to exaggerate, we use a simile, which means the exact opposite of what is said. Let’s see this with an example.

Myra said to Tony: “I don’t want you to tell her what he thinks she knows but I know you think she doesn’t know. Is that clear?”

Tony replied: “Yes! It is as clear as mud.”

Do you think Tony meant it was clear? Not at all! Myra’s sentence was so confusing, you could not see its meaning just like you can’t see anything through mud. Mud is the OPPOSITE of clear, so when we say something is as clear as mud, it means its not clear at all.

Let’s see some more examples of this kind of simile.

My schoolbag is as light as a pile of stones.

Our neighborhood is as quiet as a fish market.

Now you’ve learnt a lot about similes and if someone asks you about them, you can be as cool as a cucumber. And when you try to use them yourself, it’ll be as easy as pie. Yes, that’s a simile too!