u/Cornered_Knight

Is there a word for simile idioms that describe themselves?

It seems to me that there should be a word for when an idiom is self-referential. Maybe it's just that my Google-fu is weak, but I have not been able to find one.

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean:

"I'm going on a cycle trip with my friend but he hasn't written in a long time and is nervous. My reassured him that cycling is a skill you retain and comes back to you very quickly, in fact it's like riding a bike."

"The trick to controlling dogs is to find what motivates them, how many it is food. If you pick up a piece of roast beef you can have them eating out of the palm of your hand."

"I think that is a little rodent living behind my skirting board but it is hard to track it down because it appears to be as quiet as a mouse"

"If you store your butter in the fridge but find that makes it quite hard, I recommend running your knife blade under a hot tap for 30 seconds before you try to spread it on toast. That way you'll find you can cut into it like a hot knife through butter."

Does anyone know a term to describe these, and if not what would be a good candidate? Autometaphor? Simicycle? Tautoloanalogy? In the style of backronym, perhaps reversimile?

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u/Cornered_Knight — 2 days ago