Is this an analogy or metaphor or what? [duplicate]

From mathematics:

"Tensors eat vectors and spit out numbers."

Is this an analogy, metaphor or other named figure of speech?

Solution 1:

The literary device used is called: 1) zoomorphism, giving animal characteristics to something that is not an animal.

Alternatively, it could be called 2) personification as well, if you consider eating and spitting out as applying to humans. Somehow the verbs eat and spit out made me think of animals first. But I guess humans are animals, too.

"Tensors eat vectors and spit out numbers."

Is like a transformation of: "Lions eat gazelles and spit out their bones."

I am sure one can come up with many other images. Here's another:

1) Cats eat mice and spit out the bones. [animal]

2) Men eat fish and spit out the bones. [human]

Both are explained in the link below and I liked the cat picture (though nothing beats the disappearing Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, whose smile is left behind).

zoomorphism

But the real delight there is: chremamorphism:

"Can the qualities of inanimate objects be attributed to humans, and animals? Yes, they can, and this technique is called chremamorphism."

Mine: He started rattling, let out a prolonged cranking noise and fell silent.

Yes, these are all metaphors in that they create an image of an animal or human or thing but they are also specific literary devices. Metaphors can be created in any number of ways, all of which I am not going to go into here. Literary devices can get very complicated. A good reference handbook for everyone to have in their personal library is "The Oxford Book of Literary Terms", which is now in its fourth edition.

Analogies are comparisons. There is no comparison here. There's substitution of technical verbs for verbs associated with eating and animals. That's metaphor as the image is created of an animal through the use of the verbs.

[Editing Note: I just realized I had made a mistake in my example above so I corrected it. See chremamorphism.]