The terms 'comparatum' and 'comparans', defined to refer to the first and second terms, respectively, of a simile, are extensible to the type of metaphor in which both terms are present, e.g. 'My soul is a tomb' (Baudelaire). In both figures, the comparatum provides a point of reference and the comparans, an image. Suppression of the comparatum in metaphor creates a kind of riddle in which the image of the 'comparans' suggests the comparatum; the terms are still apt. The notions of comparans and comparatum, however, cease to be operational in metaphoric expressions of the type 'Achilles roars', which are more easily analyzed in terms of virtual subjects ('a lion roars') and virtual doubles ('Achilles yells'). All extension of comparative structures to the analysis of metaphor fails in the type 'the sea laughs', where a comparans is unnamable. (Copyright 1996, Sociological Abstracts, Inc., all rights reserved.) (J. Hitchcock in LLBA 1996, vol. 30, n. 1)