A simile is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two different things using the words "like" or "as." Jacques, the speaker, uses several similes throughout the speech "The Seven Ages of Man" to compare various stages of man's life to different things. Discussing the second stage of man's life, the speaker uses a simile when he compares a whining schoolboy reluctantly walking to class to a snail ("creeping like a snail"). Just as a snail moves slowly, the disgruntled boy reluctantly walks to school. In the third stage of man's life, the adolescent male is "sighing like furnace," which expresses the hot passions of young love. Discussing the fourth stage of man's life, the speaker uses a simile to describe a soldier's facial features by writing that it is "bearded like a pard." A "pard" is an old word for a leopard. Shakespeare is essentially saying that the young solider's beard is patchy and spotted like a leopard's coat.

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