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simile
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show 88 more with this conextual meaning
  • Well, out of the five or six millions which form your real capital, you have just lost nearly two millions, which must, of course, in the same degree diminish your credit and fictitious fortune; to follow out my simile, your skin has been opened by bleeding, and this if repeated three or four times will cause death—so pay attention to it, my dear Monsieur Danglars.   (source)
    simile = a comparison that highlights an attribute of something by pointing to a similarity with something of a different kind
  • It is useless to warn the reader not to take literally all the similes which we are obliged to employ here to express the singular, symmetrical, direct, almost consubstantial union of a man and an edifice.   (source)
    similes = expressions that highlight similarity between things of different kinds
  • His celebrated passages are quoted by everybody; they are in half the books we open, and we all talk Shakespeare, use his similes, and describe with his descriptions; but this is totally distinct from giving his sense as you gave it.   (source)
  • I didn't need similes.†   (source)
  • With limited instruction, he had perfected the art of withholding his insights, forgoing his witticisms, curbing the use of metaphors, similes, and analogies—in essence, exercising every muscle of poetic restraint.†   (source)
  • Scrap the simile: he was a voyeur.†   (source)
  • These were attached to a battery of electronic equipment—imagery intensifiers, rhythmic modulators, alliterative residulators and simile dumpers—all designed to heighten the experience of the poem and make sure that not a single nuance of the poet's thought was lost.†   (source)
  • I dealt with the Ding an $iÑžh, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.†   (source)
  • The General was a portly, ugly man, his manners were not refined, and his talk was conspicuous for an eagerness to apply military similes to a very wide variety of matters.†   (source)
  • He paused, apparently taken by the unique magnificence of his similes.†   (source)
  • He turned to Miro, a simile of triumph on his face, his eyes bright and flashing, his flesh flushed with youth.†   (source)
  • An altogether apt simile, Ramius thought.†   (source)
  • Could there be some sort of Freudian symbolism in your choice of similes?†   (source)
  • Besides its own ways of pronouncing Southern English, Texas talk has another unique characteristic: it glories in wild metaphors and exaggerated similes, with a dash of braggadocio.†   (source)
  • Everyone knew about Abby's poems, not to mention her fondness for similes.†   (source)
  • He made his mark with such economy that he was able to complete the entire circuit without having to reload once, or, to change the simile slightly, he did it all on one tank of fuel.†   (source)
  • His epic simile continues: At the sight of the man panting and dying there, she slips down to enfold him, crying out; then feels the spears, prodding her back and shoulders, and goes bound into slavery and grief.†   (source)
  • You have a good memory, Randy, and that's a good simile.†   (source)
  • Well, it was your simile to begin with, not mine.†   (source)
  • By every possible means, by repetitions and similes, the song slows down the gradual unfolding of its theme.†   (source)
  • It was like the room was swinging from side to side, as if it was at the top of a really tall building and the building was swinging backward and forward in a strong wind (this is a simile, too).   (source)
    simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
  • He was but a poor man himself, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel — those were her similes.   (source)
    similes = expressions that highlight similarity between things of different kinds
  •   "...all the peoples of the world stand aside respectfully to make way for the recklessly galloping troika to pass."
      .... The liberal significance of this simile was appreciated.   (source)
    simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
  • ...being some ten years older than I and a couple of inches taller, with his head thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his hands like a clean blacksmith's, and his lungs!  There's no simile for his lungs.  Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the house shake.   (source)
  • 'Unless he was dashed into such little pieces that they blew away, he wasn't hurt, for he went off as quiet and comfortable as—as—as demnition,' said Mr Mantalini, rather at a loss for a simile.   (source)
  • Missis Gummidge has worked like a — I doen't know what Missis Gummidge an't worked like,' said Mr. Peggotty, looking at her, at a loss for a sufficiently approving simile.   (source)
    simile = a comparison that highlights an attribute of something by pointing to a similarity with something of a different kind
  • "Oh, no!" said Levin with annoyance; "that method of doctoring I merely meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools. The people are poor and ignorant--that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the baby is ill because it screams.  But in what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen-roost affects the screaming."   (source)
    simile = an expression that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
  • Thorpe never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a proper one.   (source)
    simile = a comparison that highlights an attribute of something by pointing to a similarity with something of a different kind
  • I want an appropriate simile.   (source)
    simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
  • And a simile is not a lie, unless it is a bad simile.†   (source)
  • This is not a metaphor, it is a simile, which means that it really did look like there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils, and if you make a picture in your head of a man with two very small mice hiding in his nostrils, you will know what the police inspector looked like.†   (source)
  • …a spell of brief and inexplicable darkness that descended and dispersed again, shortly; and in the days and nights of their coming, it was said by the poet Adasay that they resembled at least six different things (he was always lavish with his similes): a migration of birds, bright birds, across a waveless ocean of milk; a procession of musical notes through the mind of a slightly mad composer; a school of those deep-swimming fish whose bodies are whorls and runnels of light, circling…†   (source)
  • His turbulent and undisciplined rhetoric had acquired, by the regular convention of its usage, something of the movement and directness of classical epithet: his similes were preposterous, created really in a spirit of vulgar mirth, and the great comic intelligence that was in the family—down to the youngest—was shaken daily by it.†   (source)
  • By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.†   (source)
  • I think the following rules will cover most cases: (i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.†   (source)
  • A disobliging simile involving Mrs. Callendar occurred to his fancy.†   (source)
  • I can't define it and can't find a simile for it.†   (source)
  • "Aha!" he said, "your simile of the tiger good, for me, and I shall adopt him.†   (source)
  • House and tree transcended any similes of sex.†   (source)
  • What becomes of your simile about the orchid?†   (source)
  • The simile passed from his mind while he exercised his professional skill.†   (source)
  • What an old, old simile that is, between man and timber!†   (source)
  • "Weathercock can without the wind," suggested Jo, as he paused for a simile.†   (source)
  • An absurd simile drawn from an ignorance of the formation of the biped.†   (source)
  • The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible simile; and the beadle went on.†   (source)
  • All similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds.†   (source)
  • "But what purpose had you," I asked, "in replacing the letter by a fac-simile?†   (source)
  • All that silence and absence of goings-on is the stillness of infinite motion—the sleep of the spinning-top, to borrow the simile of a well-known writer.†   (source)
  • The simile was quite perfect, and the English turkey looked down with complete bewilderment upon the dainty little French bantam, which hovered quite threateningly around him.†   (source)
  • That's his simile, not mine.†   (source)
  • Successful in this, the old simile of the needle in the haystack would be mild indeed compared with his brother's chance of finding him.†   (source)
  • Amory continued the simile eagerly.†   (source)
  • He had never before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow.†   (source)
  • Nature appears to one, looking at this picture, as some huge, implacable, dumb monster; or still better—a stranger simile—some enormous mechanical engine of modern days which has seized and crushed and swallowed up a great and invaluable Being, a Being worth nature and all her laws, worth the whole earth, which was perhaps created merely for the sake of the advent of that Being.†   (source)
  • I use the simile advisedly, because from his relation I am forced to believe he had preserved through it all a strange illusion of passiveness, as though he had not acted but had suffered himself to be handled by the infernal powers who had selected him for the victim of their practical joke.†   (source)
  • The effect is as if the voice had been dyed black; or,—if we must use a more moderate simile,—this miserable croak, running through all the variations of the voice, is like a black silken thread, on which the crystal beads of speech are strung, and whence they take their hue.†   (source)
  • What I saw in him—as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile—was the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take…†   (source)
  • Philip in his happier moods indulged Tom to the top of his bent, heightening the crash and bang and fury of every fight with all the artillery of epithets and similes at his command.†   (source)
  • In the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile, (so far as regards externals,) which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings—imitating the D— cipher, very readily, by means of a seal formed of bread.†   (source)
  • A strong, sweet, fresh odour seems to rise from it, and Henrietta—pardon my simile—has something of that odour in her garments.†   (source)
  • It is a fac-simile drawing of what has been described in one portion of the testimony as 'dark bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails,' upon the throat of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and in another, (by Messrs.†   (source)
  • June still lay near her, sleeping as tranquilly as if she reposed on—we will not say "down," for the superior civilization of our own times repudiates the simile—but on a French mattress, and as profoundly as if she had never experienced concern.†   (source)
  • If so low a simile may be admitted, the dress went down the staircase like a richly brocaded Jack in the Green, and nobody knew what sort of small person carried it.†   (source)
  • …on such points of the acclivity as were easier of approach than the general face of the eminence; and a little dwelling of cloth, perched on the apex of a small pyramid, that shot up on one angle of the rock, the white covering of which glimmered from a distance like a spot of snow, or, to make the simile more suitable to the rest of the subject, like a spotless and carefully guarded standard, which was to be protected by the dearest blood of those who defended the citadel beneath.†   (source)
  • He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that's the figure, or the simile, or whatever it's called, which he chooses to use.†   (source)
  • "The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description.†   (source)
  • The simile conveys the hero, named after a river on whose banks he was conceived, to another river.†   (source)
  • Yet the most subtle sophist cannot produce a juster simile.†   (source)
  • Something of Simoeisios stays the same in death, and the simile goes on to talk of the fallen tree being transformed by art.†   (source)
  • \ To this compact and shapely life story, which flashes out between Aias' first strike and the coup de grace, Homer adds an evocative simile: A poplar growing in bottom lands, in a great meadow, smooth-trunked', high up to its sheath of boughs, will fall before the chariot-builder's ax of shining iron—timber that he marked for warping into chariot tire rims— and, seasoning, it lies beside the river.†   (source)
  • In poetry, they must be allowed to excel all other mortals; wherein the justness of their similes, and the minuteness as well as exactness of their descriptions, are indeed inimitable.   (source)
    similes = expressions that highlight similarity between things of different kinds
  • In the familiar simile, /as mad as a hornet/, it is used in the American sense.†   (source)
  • I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, We convince by our presence.†   (source)
  • So with many familiar similes, /e. g./, /like greased lightning/, /as scarce as hen's teeth/; they are grotesque hyperboles, but surely not slang.†   (source)
  • Joyce, indeed, shows the Irish origin of scores of locutions that are now often mistaken for native Americanisms, for example, /great shakes/, /dead/ (as an intensive), /thank you kindly/, /to split one's sides/ (/i. e./, laughing), and /the tune the old cow died of/, not to mention many familiar similes and proverbs.†   (source)
  • A good swift simile, but something currish.†   (source)
  • Mrs Deborah is introduced into the parish with a simile.†   (source)
  • I do pity his distress in my similes of comfort, and leave him to your lordship.†   (source)
  • As I have here taken up this simile, give me leave to carry it a little farther.†   (source)
  • Thou hast the most unsavoury similes, and art, indeed, the most comparative, rascalliest, sweet young prince,—But, Hal, I pr'ythee trouble me no more with vanity.†   (source)
  • O, yes, into a thousand similes.†   (source)
  • "It was no ill simile by which Plato set forth the unreasonableness of a philosopher's meddling with government.†   (source)
  • In which a simile in Mr Pope's period of a mile introduces as bloody a battle as can possibly be fought without the assistance of steel or cold iron.†   (source)
  • Much kinder was she to me, when she suggested that simile of the hounds, just before inserted; since the poor wife may, on these occasions, be so justly compared to a hunted hare.†   (source)
  • Thus the passion of Mrs Honour appears natural enough, even if it were to be no otherwise accounted for; but, in reality, there was another cause of her anger; for which we must beg leave to remind our reader of a circumstance mentioned in the above simile.†   (source)
  • The sagacious reader will not from this simile imagine these poor people had any apprehension of the design with which Mrs Wilkins was now coming towards them; but as the great beauty of the simile may possibly sleep these hundred years, till some future commentator shall take this work in hand, I think proper to lend the reader a little assistance in this place.†   (source)
  • …a fire, turns pale and trembles at his loss; but when he finds the beautiful palaces only are burnt, and his own cottage remains safe, he comes instantly to himself, and smiles at his good fortunes: or as (for we dislike something in the former simile) the tender mother, when terrified with the apprehension that her darling boy is drowned, is struck senseless and almost dead with consternation; but when she is told that little master is safe, and the Victory only, with twelve hundred…†   (source)
  • That our work, therefore, might be in no danger of being likened to the labours of these historians, we have taken every occasion of interspersing through the whole sundry similes, descriptions, and other kind of poetical embellishments.†   (source)
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