(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition
a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds — usually formed with "like" or "as"as in "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," or "She is as quiet as a mouse."
- When she said he was "as subtle as a sledgehammer," she was using ironic simile.
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
- A good simile or metaphor will help your audience to remember a main point.
- I believe this simile largely speaks the truth.Darwin, Charles -- The Origin of Species
- His idea of it was that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut off—such was the simile that occurred to him.Jack London -- To Build a Fire
- 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.Jane Austen -- Mansfield Park
- He was but a poor man himself, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel — those were her similes.Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield
- It was falling so hard that it looked like white sparks (and this is a simile, too, not a metaphor).Mark Haddon -- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
- He stopped, at a loss for a simile.Agatha Christie -- Murder On The Orient Express
- To me, literature is something much more alive. More like a barrel of eels. .... Now, if that simile doesn't put you off reading entirely, you know you're serious.Thomas C. Foster -- How to Read Literature Like a Professor
- "...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.Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Brothers Karamazov - ...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.Charles Dickens -- Bleak House
- 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.Alexandre Dumas -- The Count of Monte Cristo
- Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
... I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.Charles Dickens -- A Christmas Carol - I want an appropriate simile.Jane Austen -- Northanger Abbey
- How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? People were more often—he searched for a simile, found one in his work—torches, blazing away until they whiffed out.Ray Bradbury -- Fahrenheit 451
- "How, how am I to tell you what I mean?" said Serpuhovskoy, who liked similes.Leo Tolstoy -- Anna Karenina
- Thorpe never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a proper one.Jane Austen -- Northanger Abbey
- One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe.Upton Sinclair -- The Jungle
- 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.Jonathan Swift -- Gulliver's Travels
- "Who does he think he is — Achilles?"
Colonel Korn was pleased with the simile and filed a mental reminder to repeat it the next time he found himself in General Peckem's presence.Joseph Heller -- Catch-22
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
similes = expressions that highlight similarity between things of different kinds
similes = expressions that highlight similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a comparison that highlights an attribute of something by pointing to a similarity with something of a different kind
simile = an expression that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a comparison that highlights an attribute of something by pointing to a similarity with something of a different kind
similes = expressions that highlight similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a comparison that highlights an attribute of something by pointing to a similarity with something of a different kind
similes = expressions that highlight similarity between things of different kinds
similes = expressions that highlight similarity between things of different kinds
simile = a phrase that highlights similarity between things of different kinds