Possibility, condition, degree, reinforcement, beautification, disfigurement, unusualness, reversal and mutual likeness Read the bilingual lesson for Purposes of Simile: Possibility, Condition, Degree, Beautification, Disfigurement and Reversal and test your understanding with a focused quiz.
Lesson
1. Purpose of simile beyond its structure
والغرض منه في الأغلب يعود إلى المشبه
The purpose of a simile most often concerns the subject of the comparison.
The components of a simile identify what is compared with what, in which shared respect and by what expression. Its rhetorical purpose asks a further question: what understanding or response is the speaker trying to produce by drawing that likeness?
The same two terms could appear in different contexts for different purposes. A simile may establish that something is possible, explain a quality, measure its degree, reinforce a claim, or make something attractive or repellent. Purpose therefore depends on the speaker's communicative intention and context, not merely the nouns used.
2. Expressing the comparison through a verb
كما في «علمت زيدًا أسدًا»
As in, “I knew Zayd to be a lion.”
The verb ʿalimtu presents the comparison as something strongly recognised: Zayd's lion-like bravery is treated as readily established. It does not assert that Zayd literally belongs to the animal species lion.
By contrast, «حسبت زيدًا أسدًا», “I supposed Zayd a lion,” carries a sense of supposition, distance or amazement. The compared terms remain Zayd and the lion, but the choice between knowing and supposing affects the rhetorical suggestion. The verbal form can thus contribute to the force of a comparison without changing its underlying terms.
3. The two directions of rhetorical purpose
When purpose returns to the subject of comparison, the speaker aims to clarify, measure, establish, strengthen or colour an attribute of that subject. For example, likening a courageous person to a lion ordinarily intensifies our sense of the person's bravery.
In another kind of comparison, the purpose returns to the comparison term: the apparently subordinate image may be treated as the point of interest and presented as more excellent, prominent or memorable. Reversed simile is an important instance of this strategy.
The first direction includes explaining possibility, condition and degree, reinforcing an existing quality, beautification, disfigurement and making something unusual. The second includes reversal and emphasising the comparison term. Identifying the intended direction requires reading the praise, criticism and communicative aim of the utterance.
4. Explaining possibility
بيان إمكانه إذا كان أمراً غريباً يمكن أن يخالف فيه ويدّعي امتناعه
Demonstrating its possibility when the matter appears strange, may be disputed, or may be alleged impossible.
In explaining possibility, the speaker faces an assertion about the subject that a listener might initially reject as unlikely or impossible. The comparison term supplies an accepted case displaying the relevant kind of occurrence, thereby showing that the claim is not intrinsically impossible.
The aim is not primarily to quantify a feature; it is to remove resistance to the possibility of the asserted condition. To be persuasive, the analogy should appeal to a case the audience can recognise rather than to a second, even more dubious example.
5. The musk-and-gazelle verse
فَإِنْ تَفُقِ الأَنَامَ وَأَنْتَ مِنْهُمْ فَإِنَّ الْمِسْكَ بَعْضُ دَمِ الْغَزَالِ
If you surpass other people while being one of them, it is no impossibility: musk itself comes from the gazelle's blood.
The verse anticipates the apparent surprise that someone belonging to humanity could excel other humans so markedly. It supplies an acknowledged comparison: something originating from a common material can become markedly distinguished in quality.
The subject is a person outstanding among fellow humans, and the comparison term is musk in relation to the gazelle's blood. The objective is to establish possibility, not to prove that the particular addressee really surpasses everyone. The objection being answered is the false assumption that a common origin makes exceptional distinction impossible.
6. Why the analogy must be accepted
For a possibility-based comparison, the claim about the subject is in question, whereas the analogous feature in the comparison term must be sufficiently accepted. If both instances are equally contested, the comparison does little to remove the initial objection.
A person might argue that a pupil from an ordinary school can be exceptional, just as fruit from one garden can differ greatly in quality. The garden analogy makes the possibility intelligible; it does not establish, without evidence, that the particular student actually achieved excellence.
Thus showing possibility differs from proving occurrence. The former removes the claim of impossibility, while the latter establishes a fact. The rhetorical purpose under discussion concerns the former.
7. Explaining an unknown condition
أو حاله
Or explaining its condition.
Explaining a condition is intended when the listener does not know the subject's relevant quality and can learn it through a familiar comparison term. The essential question is not how intense the quality is, but what the quality is.
Suppose the colour of a piece of cloth is unknown. Comparing it with another cloth known to be black tells the listener that the first cloth is black as well. The point is the presence and type of colour. If the speaker instead aims to explain how extremely black the cloth is, the purpose moves from the nature of the condition to its degree.
8. Condition versus degree
كما في تشبيه ثوب بآخر في السواد، أو مقدارها
As when cloth is compared with cloth for blackness, or to show the measure of that blackness.
Condition: “This cloth is black like that cloth.” The listener learns the type of colour possessed by the first cloth.
Degree: “Its blackness is as deep as a raven's plumage.” The listener knows the quality is blackness but needs its intensity explained.
The contrast is not between a simile and a non-simile. Both are comparisons. The controlling issue is what the listener does not yet know—the nature of the quality or its amount and force. One expression may fulfil either purpose in different contexts.
9. A familiar measure for degree
كما في تشبيه الثوب الأسود بالغراب في شدة السواد
As in comparing black cloth with a raven for the intensity of its blackness.
The raven serves as a familiar measure because its black colouring is conspicuous to the audience. The cloth's being black may already be known; the comparison is now intended to make the degree of blackness more readily imaginable.
If the listener has no sense of the comparison term's colour, the illustration fails. Likewise, if the real issue were whether the cloth is black at all, the same words might be functioning to show the condition rather than its amount. Audience knowledge and communicative purpose govern the classification.
10. Reinforcing an already understood condition
أو تقريرها
Or reinforcing that condition.
In reinforcement, the relevant feature need not be previously unknown. Instead, the speaker seeks to impress an existing judgment more firmly upon the hearer, making its significance vivid and hard to dismiss. A concrete comparison gives established knowledge renewed force.
For instance, if the audience already knows that someone's repeated efforts achieve nothing lasting, likening those efforts to writing on water can reinforce the notion of futility. The comparison seeks consolidation and vivid impact, rather than merely revealing a previously unknown quality.
11. Writing on water: use and limitation
كما في تشبيه من لا يحصل من سعيه على طائل بمن يرقم على الماء
As in comparing a person whose efforts yield nothing with one who writes upon water.
In the comparison, the image of writing that vanishes at once illustrates effort without a lasting product. The listener can readily picture this and therefore feels the futility of the activity more strongly.
The analogy should not be assigned indiscriminately to every rhetorical purpose. Writing on water is already familiar as a fruitless action: it is better suited to reinforcing an acknowledged situation than to proving the mere possibility of some strange event. Its immediate function is to clarify and consolidate the known failure.
12. When the first four purposes work
وهذه الأغراض الأربعة تقتضي أن يكون وجه الشبه في المشبه به أتم، وهو به أشهر
These four purposes require the common quality to be more complete and familiar in the comparison term.
Proving possibility, explaining a condition, measuring a degree and reinforcing a condition all work by using the comparison term as a clearer reference point. If that reference is itself obscure or weaker for the intended respect, the explanation loses force.
Being more familiar does not require the comparison term to be objectively superior in every aspect. It means that the relevant respect of resemblance is better established in the audience's understanding; particular purposes such as measuring degree also make the definiteness or fullness of that respect especially important.
13. The four explanatory purposes compared
PurposeListener's needFunction of similePossibilitySuspects impossibilityShow an accepted analogous caseConditionDoes not know the kind of qualityIdentify its characterDegreeDoes not know its intensityClarify its amount or forceReinforcementKnows the condition, but weakly feels itMake the judgment more vivid
The comparison term is the clearer reference point in each case, but the questions differ: Is this possible?, What sort of state is this?, How much of it is there? and How can the established fact be made more persuasive? One familiar image does not automatically determine the rhetorical aim.
14. Tazyīn: making the subject attractive
أو تزيينه
Or making it appear attractive.
Tazyīn is the purpose for which a subject is compared with something pleasing, admirable or aesthetically attractive to the intended audience. The likeness transfers a favourable impression toward the subject. The object is not simply to measure how much of a quality exists but to reveal its beauty or charm.
For example, a speaker praising a dark complexion might compare it with an admired deep-black pattern or attractive dark colouring. Darkness alone is neither praise nor criticism. The selected comparator and the context show whether the intended effect is beautification rather than measurement or disparagement.
15. Tashwīh: making a feature repellent
أو تشويهه أي تقبيحه
Or making it appear ugly or repellent.
Tashwīh, in contrast to beautification, selects a comparison intended to evoke aversion or disgust. The classical example likening a pockmarked face to congealed foul material pecked at by birds is meant to transfer a particularly unpleasant imagined texture to the subject.
This is a rhetorical impression, not an objective judgment about a person's worth or appearance. Distinguish explaining degree from disfigurement: the former measures the intensity of a quality, whereas the latter aims to produce a negative emotional response in the audience.
16. Istitrāf: making a likeness remarkable
أو استطرافه
Or presenting it in an unusual and striking way.
Istitrāf aims to make the subject remarkable, surprising or memorable by means of a comparison. The speaker need not be trying chiefly to praise or degrade the subject; the primary purpose is to display it in an uncommon way that captures attention.
The comparison term can be an unusual external occurrence or an image rarely assembled in the mind. A successful unexpected comparison is more than a strange word choice: it reveals a relevant likeness, making the subject's presentation new without severing the logical or imaginative connection.
17. A rare external configuration
كما في تشبيه فحم فيه جمر موقد ببحر من المسك موجه الذهب لإبرازه
As in comparing coal with glowing embers to a sea of musk whose waves are gold, so as to make its image striking.
The image sets a dark background against bright glowing elements, converting a perceivable arrangement of coal and fire into an extraordinary imagined seascape. The comparison term—a sea of musk with golden waves—is not an everyday observed object.
The purpose is not to claim that the coal literally has musk's fragrance or that fire is a sea. Rather, the combined visual configuration of darkness and brilliance becomes remarkable through a novel counterpart. This is a clear route by which a simile serves the purpose of making an image unusual.
18. A comparison rarely present to the mind
وهو أن يكون المشبه به نادر الحضور في الذهن
That is, the comparison term is rarely present to the mind.
Rarity need not mean that the comparison term is physically scarce. Two individually familiar scenes may hardly ever be contemplated together as analogous. A poet can connect them in a previously unsuspected way, producing an unexpected mental association.
Thus distinguish external rarity from the mental rarity of a resemblance. Even common objects may yield an uncommon rhetorical comparison when their relation rarely occurs to the audience. The relationship must, however, become intelligible after reflection; unconnected oddity alone does not amount to an effective simile.
19. Seven purposes directed toward the subject
PurposePrincipal questionPossibilityCan the surprising claim be true?ConditionWhat kind of condition is it?DegreeHow intense is the quality?ReinforcementHow can a known condition be impressed more firmly?BeautificationHow is attractiveness emphasised?DisfigurementHow is aversion intensified?Making remarkableHow does the likeness become unusual?
All seven purposes chiefly concern the subject, but they produce different effects. The first four usually clarify or strengthen understanding; beautification evokes admiration, disfigurement evokes repulsion, and unusual comparison creates surprise.
Classification requires more than locating the shared quality. It must account for what the audience already knows and what new intellectual or emotional response the speaker seeks.
20. When the purpose concerns the comparison term
وقد يعود الغرض من التشبيه إلى المشبه به
The purpose of a simile may instead concern the comparison term.
Normally the comparison term functions as the clearer benchmark by which the subject's quality is understood. In some rhetorical settings the arrangement directs attention back to the excellence or prominence of the comparison term.
Two notable instances are reversed simile, which suggests that the subject actually exceeds its supposed standard in the chosen quality, and demonstrating concern or preoccupation, in which the speaker's choice of image reveals what matters most to them. These are distinct purposes, even though both shift attention away from the usual direction of clarification.
21. Defining reversed simile
إيهام أنه أتم من المشبه في وجه الشبه، وذلك في التشبيه المقلوب
Creating the impression that the comparison term is more complete than the subject in the shared respect—an effect of reversed simile.
Reversed simile overturns the familiar reference point to exalt what is being praised. The ordinary claim is that a praised person's face resembles the bright morning. In the reversed arrangement the morning is likened to that face, as though the person's radiance were the better standard.
The reversal is a figure of deliberate rhetorical exaggeration, not a scientific claim about actual illumination. Its force depends on reversing the listener's expectation that dawn is the conventional benchmark for brightness.
22. Dawn and the praised face
وبدا الصباح
And the morning appeared.
In a comparison involving dawn and a praised person's face, two arrangements are possible. An ordinary simile explains facial brilliance by likening it to dawn. Reversal instead presents dawn as if it derived its very brightness from the face being praised.
The effect is deliberate hyperbole about the praised person's excellence and radiance. One must determine more than which noun occurs first. The question is which term has been made the superior benchmark and whose superiority the comparison is designed to establish.
23. Reversal and rhetorical assertion
Reversed simile is not a logical proof that natural properties have changed or that the sun literally depends on a human being for light. Its rhetorical purpose is to invert the accepted exemplar and the item being explained so that praise seems stronger.
Examples:
Ordinary: “His face is radiant like dawn.” Dawn is the familiar standard.
Reversed: “Dawn is radiant like his face.” The face becomes the asserted standard.
The reader must distinguish reversing word order from asserting superiority through reversal. Not every simple exchange of terms is a successful reversed simile: the context and the implied elevation of a new standard matter.
24. Showing preoccupation with the comparison term
والضرب الثاني من الغرض العائد إلى المشبه به بيان الاهتمام به
The second purpose concerning the comparison term is to show special concern for it.
In showing preoccupation, the speaker sees other things in terms of an object that occupies their thoughts or meets a pressing desire. Selecting that comparison term reveals mental attention or need, not necessarily a claim that the term excels in the shared quality.
A hungry person might compare a bright face to bread because roundness and brightness awaken thoughts of food. The stronger communicative effect is the speaker's attachment to bread rather than high praise for the face. This distinguishes preoccupation from reversed simile.
25. The hungry person and the loaf
كتشبيه الجائع وجها كالبدر في الإشراق والاستدارة بالرغيف
As when a hungry person compares a round, shining face with a loaf instead of the moon.
The face and loaf can be compared in roundness and perhaps a bright or smooth surface, so the likeness is not meaningless. Yet choosing bread over the familiar moon image discloses the person's intense desire for food.
The rhetorical question is not whether bread is objectively more beautiful than the moon, but why bread comes immediately to this speaker's mind. The explanation lies in a psychological state and urgent concern. Merely listing the shared visual features would miss the special point of the simile.
26. Reversal versus preoccupation
AspectReversed similePreoccupationCentral goalInvert the usual benchmark to assert excellenceReveal intense attention or needEffectHyperbolic superiorityInterest, longing or urgent concernTypical instanceDawn likened to a praised faceHungry observer likening a face to a loaf
Both involve a purpose directed toward the comparison term, yet for different reasons. Reversal suggests exceptional superiority; preoccupation exposes the speaker's inward priorities. Calling them both simply “exaggeration” would erase an important distinction between two rhetorical operations.
27. Bringing two things together without hierarchy
فإن أريد الجمع بين شيئين في أمر من غير قصد إلى كون أحدهما ناقصا والآخر زائدا
If the intention is simply to unite two things in one respect, without making one deficient and the other superior.
Sometimes the speaker wishes to state equality in a shared feature, not to assign one side the role of standard and the other the role of dependent example. Forcing an ordinary subject/comparison-term hierarchy can suggest a preference that is absent from the intention.
A direct judgment of mutual resemblance can then be clearer: “The two friends resemble one another in patience” may be better than “The first is patient like the second,” because it avoids implying that only one is the reference measure.
28. Why mutual likeness may be preferable
فالأحسن ترك التشبيه إلى الحكم بالتشابه
In that situation, it is better to state mutual resemblance rather than a one-directional simile.
A normal simile tends to establish a direction: one term explains another. Explicit mutual resemblance may express equality in the relevant respect more aptly. When the intended meaning is simply that two things share a quality, without giving either primacy, the mutual construction avoids importing an unintended hierarchy.
This is not a categorical ban on similes between equal terms. A speaker may still arrange either term as subject or comparator for reasons of emphasis, interest or context. The most suitable expression depends on the intended meaning, not on a rigid word-count or structure rule.
29. When a simile is still valid between equals
ويجوز عند إرادة الجمع بين شيئين في أمر التشبيه أيضاً
A simile can also be used when the purpose is to unite two things in one respect.
Even where two terms are effectively equal in a shared respect, a particular rhetorical intention may justify treating one as subject and the other as comparator. The speaker may want to foreground one item, attach something new to what has already been mentioned, or create an effect by arranging the terms differently.
For example, the whiteness of dawn can be compared with the bright marking on a horse's forehead, and the direction can also be reversed. The likeness remains intelligible; the controlling question is which rhetorical purpose the chosen direction serves.
30. Switching the two sides and changing the emphasis
كتشبيه غرة الفرس بالصبح وعكسه
As in likening the white marking on a horse's forehead to dawn, or the reverse.
Ghurrat al-faras refers to a conspicuous light or white marking on a horse's forehead. When the marking is compared with dawn, dawn functions as the familiar source of brightness. When dawn is compared with the marking, attention may shift to the special shape and prominence of a bright patch.
Both arrangements have an intelligible respect of resemblance, but their emphasis and purpose can differ. Reversal may become a full rhetorical reversed simile when the context asserts superior excellence; a mere exchange of grammatical positions does not automatically achieve that effect.
31. A worked method for identifying purpose
To determine a simile's purpose, separate three stages. First identify its structure: subject, comparator and shared respect. Second ask what the listener already knows. Third ask what new understanding or response the speaker intends to produce.
Example 1: an exceptional person can arise among ordinary people, as musk arises from gazelle blood — possibility.
Example 2: a cloth is as deeply black as a raven — degree.
Example 3: known fruitless labour resembles writing on water — reinforcement.
Example 4: a hungry person likens a bright face to a loaf — preoccupation.
The marker used, the image's attractiveness, or a surface reading of the words does not by itself settle the issue; the situation of utterance remains decisive.
32. Integrated view of rhetorical aims
Possibility removes an objection that an unusual claim is impossible. Condition identifies a quality, and degree shows its intensity. Reinforcement deepens an already known state; beautification heightens attractiveness; disfigurement evokes aversion; making remarkable presents an unexpected image.
When the intended effect concerns the comparator, reversed simile inverts the expected benchmark to create hyperbolic praise, while preoccupation reveals the speaker's pressing need or desire. These effects should not be conflated.
Finally, if the speaker seeks only to say that two things share a feature, a judgment of mutual likeness may be preferable, though a simile remains possible for a special rhetorical aim. These distinctions provide the basis for analysing subsequent divisions of simile according to its two terms.