Home › Glossary › Letter C

Concrete comparison

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A simile or metaphor grounded in physical, sensory, or observable reality

Detailed Definition
Concrete comparison grounds abstract emotions or ideas in tangible, sensory details—such as “loneliness like an empty coat on a hook”—to make intangible states palpable; rooted in Imagist and Objectivist principles, it prioritizes specificity over generalization, allowing readers to experience emotion through physical objects, textures, or actions rather than through conceptual exposition.
Example
Example in poetry:
Concrete comparison uses tangible, sensory details to draw parallels, as in William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”: “so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow”; In “This Is Just to Say,” Williams compares plums to “so sweet / and so cold”; Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” offers concrete comparison: “You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting”; Another example: “His anger was a hot coal dropped in snow—hissing, shrinking, gone”
Additional Notes
Concrete comparison grounds abstract ideas in tangible, sensory details (e.g., “grief like wet wool”); strengthens emotional authenticity and is a cornerstone of imagist and objectivist poetics.
Also Known As
Sensory simile Tangible analogy Physical metaphor embodied simile tangible comparison
Skip to main content