Dissimile

[robinturner]

I'm wondering if there's a name (preferably a nice Graeco-Latin name) for knowingly using a poorly-fitting simile or metaphor. For example, the following line from a friend's LiveJournal:

"A nicely lit fishtank in a darkened room can kind of be like a glowing fireplace, just wet. And not warm."

Comments

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

Maybe 'malapropism' - which is derived from a bernard-Shaw play. Doesn't mean exaclty what you describe, though. More yer, Hilda Baker, "Eeee, it were like Sodom and Tomorra'".

[solri.livejournal.com]

It's not really like Malapropism, since there the humour results from an unintentional misuse of vocabulary, whereas here it comes from a deliberate misuse of simile. Here's another example of the kind of thing I mean:

"Tony Blair is a knight in shining armour. Except he's not shiny, and he's as likely to kill the princess as the dragon."

"George Bush is rather like Dustin Hoffman's character in Rainman. Well, he would be if he was harmless and good at maths."

Shakespeare does a similar kind of thing sometimes, as in the sonnets "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" and "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

Metaphor-assonance? Except it's not even really close in the examples you cite. (Favorite line from Educating Rita: "Assonance means you got the rhyme wrong.")

[solri.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of a great line in Dlaziell and Pascoe book: "Irony - that's sarcasm for posh folk, innit?"