simile [Lat.,=likeness], in rhetoric, a figure of speech in which an object is explicitly compared to another object. Robert Burns's poem "A Red Red Rose" contains two straightforward similes:

My love is like a red, red rose
  That's newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melody
  That's sweetly played in tune.

The epic, or Homeric, simile is an elaborate, formal, and sustained simile derived from those of Homer.