▪ I. allegory
(ˈælɪgərɪ)
Forms: 4–7 allegorie, 5–6 allegorye, 6– allegory.
[ad. L. allēgoria, a. Gr. ἀλληγορία, lit. speaking otherwise than one seems to speak, f. ἄλλος other + -ἄγορία speaking; cf. ἀγορεύω to speak, orig. to harangue, f. ἀγορά the public assembly. Cf. Fr. allégorie, perh. the direct source of the Eng. The L. allegoria was occas. used unchanged in 16th c.]
1. Description of a subject under the guise of some other subject of aptly suggestive resemblance.
| 1382 Wyclif Gal. iv. 24 The whiche thingis ben seid by allegorie, or goostly vndirstondinge [Vulg. per allegoriam]. 1477 Earl Rivers (Caxton) Dictes 66 The sayd Platon dide teche his sapyence by allegorye. 1589 Puttenham Eng. Poesie (1869) 196 Properly and in his principall vertue Allegoria is when we do speake in sence translatiue and wrested from the owne signification, neuerthelesse applied to another not altogether contrary, but hauing much conueniencie with it. 1712 Parnell Spect. No. 501 ¶1 Some of the finest compositions among the ancients are in allegory. 1840 Carlyle Heroes (1858) 207 Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot be religious Faith. |
b. attrib.
| 1532 More Confut. Tindale Wks. 1557, 415/1 These heretikes nowe not onely rob the churche in an allegorye sense. ― Answ. Frith 835/1 The wordes of Chryste might beside the lyttarall sence bee vnderstanden in an allegorye. |
2. An instance of such description; a figurative sentence, discourse, or narrative, in which properties and circumstances attributed to the apparent subject really refer to the subject they are meant to suggest; an extended or continued metaphor.
| 1534 More On the Passion Wks. 1557, 1340/1 It might be taken for an allegory or some other trope or figure. 1577 T. Vautrollier tr. Luther's Ep. Gal. 149 The allegorie of the two sonnes of Abraham, Isaacke and Ismael. 1611 Bible Gal. iv. 24 Which things are an Allegorie. 1751 Johnson Rambl. No. 176 ¶11 They discover in every passage..some artful allegory. 1846 T. Wright Mid. Ages II. xix. 257 The spirited and extremely popular political allegory of the ‘Vision of Piers Ploughman.’ |
3. An allegorical representation; an emblem.
| a 1639 W. Whately Protot. i. xi. (1640) 154 These two mothers and the children borne of them were allegories, that is, figures of some other thing mystically signified by them. 1769 Burke State Nat. Wks. II. 134 Procrustes..with his iron bed, the allegory of his government. 1882 Mrs. Pitman Mission Life in Greece 30 That Hercules is only an allegory of the sun. |
▪ II. † ˈallegory, v. Obs.
[f. the n. Perh. misprint for allegorize.]
To allegorize.
| 1554 Whitgift Defense 571 (R.) Some do allegorie vpon this place, saying that Christ is lifted vp by the preaching of the gospell. |