"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

Wednesday 28 January 2009

Simile

A simile is a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds, usually formed with 'as' or 'like'. Some examples of well know similes include ‘ as busy as a bee’, ‘as thick as two short planks’, ‘as easy as falling off a log’ and, of course, ‘as mad as a box of frogs’.

The word simile comes from the Latin similis (like).

Here are a few less well know / freshly minted ones courtesy of Simon:

as dextrous as an octopus using seven pairs of scissors
as reliable as a fox wearing a cravat
as doomed to failure as a bouncy castle birthday party for hedgehogs

(the above suffer from not being pithy which, in my view, is one of the essential elements of a good simile)
as easy as herding cats
as spotty as a teenage leopard
like a duck to custard
like lambs to the mint sauce
as big as a very big thing

4 comments:

  1. 'As mad as a box of frogs'! Where did you conjure that one up from?

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  2. That's funny, Jo hadn't heard it either. But it does appear on the Internet so I obviously didn't invent it!

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  3. That's funny, Jo hadn't heard it either. But it does appear on the Internet so I obviously didn't invent it!

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  4. That's my favorite too. Creates such a visual!
    HAHAHAHAH!

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