noun

• The act of comparing or the state or process of being compared.
• An evaluation of the similarities and differences of one or more things relative to some other or each other.
• With a negation, the state of being similar or alike.
• (grammar) A feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe.
• That to which, or with which, a thing is compared, as being equal or like; illustration; similitude.
• (rhetoric) A simile.
• (phrenology) The faculty of the reflective group which is supposed to perceive resemblances and contrasts.