Subject: Analogies and Metaphors by Students
Every year, English teachers from across the country can 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
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
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
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. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as
if she were a garbage truck backing up.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with
power tools.
25. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
