A simile is a figure of speech in which two things are compared using like or as. Figurative speech is not meant to be taken literally, and is instead meant to be interpreted figuratively. For example, the simile "the tile was slippery as an eel" has nothing to do with actual eels. One can interpret that the slipperiness of the tiles resembled that of an eel, but that is all that is meant to be assumed of the expression.
