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Analogies and metaphors


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Every year, English teachers from across the country submit their

collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays.

These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.

 

Here are last year's winners.....

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently

compressed by a Thigh Master.

 

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like

underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

 

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse, without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

 

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was

room-temperature Canadian beef.

 

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

 

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

 

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

 

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly

surcharge-free ATM machine.

 

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling

ball wouldn't.

 

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled

with vegetable soup.

 

11. 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.

 

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

 

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

 

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the

grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left

Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

 

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that

resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

 

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

 

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East

River.

 

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one

that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

 

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

 

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this

plan just might work.

 

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating

for a while.

 

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

 

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg

behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

 

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with

power tools.

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

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My top 3:

 

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse, without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

 

 

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this

plan just might work.

 

 

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

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My favourite:

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
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9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling

ball wouldn't.

182552[/snapback]

 

Is from the Phantom Tollbooth.

182832[/snapback]

 

Douglas Adams uses something very similar in one of the Hitchhiker books, too... "The spaceship hovered in the air in much the same way a brick doesn't", or suchlike.

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9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling

ball wouldn't.

182552[/snapback]

 

Is from the Phantom Tollbooth.

182832[/snapback]

 

Douglas Adams uses something very similar in one of the Hitchhiker books, too... "The spaceship hovered in the air in much the same way a brick doesn't", or suchlike.

182872[/snapback]

 

That's who I thought of. A long with the Oasis lyrics "Slowly walking down the hall, Faster than a cannonball", which admittedly is a slightly different metaphor....

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9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling

ball wouldn't.

182552[/snapback]

 

Is from the Phantom Tollbooth.

182832[/snapback]

 

Douglas Adams uses something very similar in one of the Hitchhiker books, too... "The spaceship hovered in the air in much the same way a brick doesn't", or suchlike.

182872[/snapback]

 

That's who I thought of. A long with the Oasis lyrics "Slowly walking down the hall, Faster than a cannonball", which admittedly is a slightly different metaphor....

182877[/snapback]

 

In that it's pseudo-philosophical wank for 6th formers who think they're deep, you mean?

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