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Friday, December 2, 2011

Similes to Make You Smile

This blog post from House of Figs is making the rounds on the internet recently. It claims to be the 56 best/worst analogies written by high school students, although the site's owner, Bethany Amanda, does say that she has discovered that most these were in fact written for a Washington Post contest. No matter who wrote them, they are pretty amusing. They are also mostly similes, which is after all one technique for making an analogy. Here are a few of my favorites:

4.  From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

5.  John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

18.  The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

32.  He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

48.  I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.

50.  Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

51.  It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

Enjoy them all at the link.

2 comments:

Chris said...

32# is brilliant!

Jessica Goodfellow said...

These are great, aren't they, Chris! We should have a contest and make up some of our own...