 To take a comparison literally is to assess it in the light of a canon of similarity already in play when the comparison is uttered, a generally prevailing or already prevailing canon of similarity. This is how we always take a comparison on first encountering it. And when the content we thereby assign it is fully in accord with Gricean conversational principles, this is the only way we ever do take it, the way we presume we were intended to take it all along. Such is how we take (1), for example.