allegory
pronunciation
How to pronounce allegory in British English:
UK [ˈæləgəri]
How to pronounce allegory in American English:
US [ˈæləgɔri]
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- Noun:
- a short moral story (often with animal characters)
- a visible symbol representing an abstract idea
- an expressive style that uses fictional characters and events to describe some subject by suggestive resemblances; an extended metaphor
Word Origin
- allegory
- allegory: [14] Etymologically, allegory means ‘speaking otherwise’. It comes from a Greek compound based on allos ‘other’ (which is related to Latin alius, as in English alibi and alias, and to English else) and agoreúein ‘speak publicly’ (derived from agorá ‘(place of) assembly’, which is the source of English agoraphobia and is related to gregarious). Greek allēgorein ‘speak figuratively’ produced the noun allēgorīā, which passed into English via Latin and French.=> aggregate, agoraphobia, alias, alibi, else, gregarious
- allegory (n.)
- late 14c., from Old French allegorie (12c.), from Latin allegoria, from Greek allegoria "figurative language, description of one thing under the image of another," literally "a speaking about something else," from allos "another, different" (see alias (adv.)) + agoreuein "speak openly, speak in the assembly," from agora "assembly" (see agora).
Example
- 1. And " she 's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the nile ! "
- 2. How different is this allegory of the emergence of the world from chaos from the modern big bang theory with its inexplicable components ?
- 3. But if you read the bible as poetry and allegory as well as history , you can see god 's hand in nature - and in evolution .
- 4. What 's at issue in the garden of eden allegory is whether agriculture was a qualitative break in human history - " a catastrophe , " as diamond puts it , " from which we have never recovered . "