A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things using words such as “like” or “as.”
Similes make a comparison explicit. Saying “the lake was like glass” links the lake’s appearance to glass without claiming that the lake literally is glass. The comparison helps readers picture a quality—smoothness, brightness, speed, or strength—more vividly than a plain description might.
Similes are closely related to metaphors, but their usual signals differ. “The child is as quiet as a mouse” is a simile, while “the child is a mouse” is a metaphor. The distinction is useful in school grammar and literary analysis, although some scholars treat simile as a particular form of metaphor because both create figurative comparisons.
The word “simile” comes from the Latin “similis,” meaning “similar” or “like.” Not every sentence containing “like” is a simile: “She looks like her mother” may be a literal comparison. A figurative comparison generally creates the imaginative effect associated with the term.