A term you'll meet in figurative language.
An extended metaphor is a metaphor that is developed and sustained over several lines, a long passage, or even an entire work — rather than stated in a single phrase and dropped. The writer keeps returning to the same comparison, drawing out its implications point by point.
A simple metaphor makes one quick identification ("the world's a stage") and moves on. An extended metaphor takes that comparison and elaborates it: if the world is a stage, then "all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances," each playing many parts across the acts of a life. The comparison is mined for everything it can yield.
Sustaining one comparison lets a writer explore a complex idea with unusual coherence and depth. Each new facet of the metaphor illuminates another aspect of the subject, and the accumulated image becomes a way of thinking — not just a decoration but a sustained argument made in pictures.
A conceit is essentially an extended metaphor that is especially elaborate, surprising, and intellectually ingenious — the term usually reserved for the striking, far-fetched comparisons of metaphysical poets like Donne. Every conceit is an extended metaphor; not every extended metaphor is showy enough to be called a conceit.
When you notice a comparison recurring, track it through the passage and watch how each return adds a new dimension. Ask what the sustained image lets the writer say about the subject that a single, passing metaphor could not.
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