Forms: 4–7 allegorie, 5–6 allegorye, 6– allegory. [ad. L. allēgoria, a. Gr. ἀλληγορία, lit. speaking otherwise than one seems to speak, f. ἄλλος other + ἄγορία speaking; cf. ἀγορεὐω to speak, orig. to harangue, f. ἀγορά the public assembly. Cf. Fr. allégorie, perh. the direct source of the Eng. The L. allegoria was occas. used unchanged in 16th c.]
1. Description of a subject under the guise of some other subject of aptly suggestive resemblance.
1382. Wyclif, Gal. iv. 24. The whiche thingis ben seid by allegorie, or goostly undirstondinge [Vulg. per allegoriam].
1477. Earl Rivers (Caxton), Dictes, 66. The sayd Platon dide teche his sapyence by allegorye.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie (1869), 196. Properly and in his principall vertue Allegoria is when we do speake in sence translatiue and wrested from the owne signification, neuerthelesse applied to another not altogether contrary, but hauing much conueniencie with it.
1712. Parnell, Spect., No. 501, ¶ 1. Some of the finest compositions among the ancients are in allegory.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes (1858), 207. Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot be religious Faith.
b. attrib.
1532. More, Confut. Tindale, Wks. 1557, 415/1. These heretikes nowe not onely rob the churche in an allegorye sense. Ibid., Answ. Frith, 835/1. The wordes of Chryste might beside the lyttarall sence bee vnderstanden in an allegorye.
2. An instance of such description; a figurative sentence, discourse, or narrative, in which properties and circumstances attributed to the apparent subject really refer to the subject they are meant to suggest; an extended or continued metaphor.
1534. More, On the Passion, Wks. 1557, 1340/1. It might be taken for an allegory or some other trope or figure.
1577. Vautroullier, trans. Luther’s Ep. Gal., 149. The allegorie of the two sonnes of Abraham, Isaacke and Ismael.
1611. Bible, Gal. iv. 24. Which things are an Allegorie.
1751. Johnson, Rambl., No. 176, ¶ 11. They discover in every passage … some artful allegory.
1846. T. Wright, Mid. Ages, II. xix. 257. The spirited and extremely popular political allegory of the ‘Vision of Piers Ploughman.’
3. An allegorical representation; an emblem.
a. 1639. W. Whateley, Protot., I. xi. (1640), 154. These two mothers and the children borne of them were allegories, that is, figures of some other thing mystically signified by them.
1769. Burke, State Nat., Wks. II. 134. Procrustes … with his iron bed, the allegory of his government.
1882. Emma R. Pitman, Mission Life in Greece & Pal., 30. That Hercules is only an allegory of the sun.
