Conceit

Conceit: An elaborate, extended metaphor that yokes together two strikingly unlike things across a whole passage or poem.

A conceit is a metaphor a writer refuses to drop: the stranger the pairing and the longer it is sustained, the more the poem becomes an argument for the comparison.

Conceit examples

• "Donne compares two lovers' souls to the twin legs of a drawing compass: one fixed, one roaming, always joined."

  — A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, John Donne

• "A flea that has bitten both lovers becomes the poem's whole case that they are already united."

  — The Flea, John Donne

• "Metaphysical poets like Donne and Herbert built entire poems from a single far-fetched comparison, which is why 'metaphysical conceit' names the device."

  — common usage

• "Her inbox was a tide pool: every ebb of the working day left something stranded and wriggling in it."

  — original example

Browse the full literary devices glossary or everywriting tool and word bank.