liken

Related to liken: lichen planus, LinkedIn

liken (someone or something) to (someone or something else)

To represent or describe someone or something as being very similar to someone or something else. People keep likening him to Ronald Reagan for his particular political positions. I was really able to visualize it better after my teacher likened the chemical reaction to a football play.
See also: liken, something
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

liken someone or something to someone or something

to compare someone or something to someone or something, concentrating on the similarities. He is strange. I can only liken him to an eccentric millionaire. The poet likened James to a living statue of Mercury.
See also: liken
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • be/have done with somebody/something
  • be in line with (someone or something)
  • better of
  • (someone or something) promises well
  • begin with
  • begin with (someone or something)
  • bird has flown, the
  • beware of
  • beware of (someone or something)
  • be rough on (someone or something)
References in periodicals archive
Asri said any Muslim who likens him or herself to God 'was indirectly debasing Him and denying His creation', adding that the act could be dangerous to the person's faith.
Amanah MP under fire after 'if I were God' remark
The arrivals area of passport control (the visitor's first impression) can, at best, be likened to a cattle shed.
Letter: You say - Unfriendly airport
Likens, having served three years as ambassador, is on her way out.
EL SALVADOR: U.S. SEEN INTERFERING IN ELECTORAL PROCESS
The group heard the situation likened to Rwanda, to South Africa in its darkest hour and to a second holocaust.
First-hand look at Israeli conflict: church leaders visit Middle East
Then you liken black gay Republicans to those with an S/M fetish.
Voted off
They are also linked, in other ways, with centuries-old works like the abstract and figural Nazca drawings in Peru, which must be seen from an aerial perspective--a vantage not available to the creators--to be fully appreciated, or modern-day crop circles, which have gathered a cult of followers who liken them to ancient sites and revel in the mystery of their authorship.
Vik Muniz. (Reviews)
I tend to agree, though I'd liken it to a pustulous slug.
Further blob confusion
Researchers liken the phenomenon to people in a stadium doing the wave.
Sundancing. (Astronomy)
A small but uncertain percentage of people have trouble recognizing melodies or playing music, a condition some researchers call dysmusia or amusia and liken to the reading disability dyslexia (SN: 11/25/00, p.
Scanning a brain that's out of tune. (Music)
Externally, the chutes emerge from the water in a way which the architects liken to 'mysterious fingers in search of light for prayer'.
Underwater Rituals: The extremely difficult problem of putting a mortuary in the middle of a housing estate has been approached with great thoughtfulness and tact, creating a building that is unassertive, yet dignified
One could liken the change from Stella's early to late work to Ludwig Wittgenstein's shift from the systematicness of the Tractatus Logicophilosophicus, 1921, to the openness of the Philosophical Investigations, 1953, but that would be to ignore the fact that for Wittgenstein every language game represents new possibilities, a new configuration of life, while Stella's visual language games reimagine death.
Frank Stella