What type of figure of speech is this?

It means that the person suddenly realized it was their fault. A wave a guilt means an overcomming/overwhelming feeling of guilt…I think :)

Thanks for the answer, but that’s not what I wanted to know.

Like in the sentence, “The guilt hit him like a wave,” the sentence uses a simile, because it is saying the guilt was like a wave.

In the sentence, “The guilt was a wave that washed over him,” the sentence uses a metaphor, because it is saying the guilt was a wave.

In the sentence, “He was hit with a wave of guilt,” does that sentence use a simile, metaphor, or what? I know what the figure of speech means, but I want to know what type of figure of speech it is.

Yes, it’s a metaphor.

The other common figure of speech is simile,

If you say (as Burns did) ‘My love’s like a red, red rose’ that’s a simile, because you used the word ‘like’ - showing that the two (your love/red rose) are similar.

But if you say ‘My ove is a red, red rose’ that’s a metaphor, because you’re saying that they are the same, not just similar.

OK, I understand. So it’s a metaphor because it’s saying the guilt is a wave. I just thought it wasn’t a metaphor before because of the way the words were arranged in the sentence.

Thanks :)

Hi again - well, metaphor is the closest among the regularly used figures of speech. There are lots of fancy terms (which hardly anyone uses these days)

If you’d like to go deeper into it, you could start with http://www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/williams/figofspe.htm or http://efl.htmlplanet.com/metaphors.htm

but the basic difference today is between similes and metaphors. OK?