Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Charles Dickens
Aslant, like the angels in Jacob’s dream.Beautiful as noon-day.Black as thunder.Blended like the colors in the rainbow.Blind as a brickbat.Bob up like the hammers in a pianoforte.Brazen as alabaster.Huge bulk like a sea monster among the minnows of the Thames.Calm as Clapham.Second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.Certain to make his way there as a gimlet is to go through soft deal.Cheerful as the day was long.Chuckles, like the opening of a bottle of some effervescent beverage.Cleared like a doubtful morning when it gives place to a bright noon.Clung to the soil like Caliban.Coarse in grain as the bark of an oak.Collapse like the cheeks of a starved man.Comfortable as the hungry pig was, when he was shut up by mistake in the grain department of a brewery.Convivial as a live trout in a lime-basket.Crisp as new bank notes.Cross as two sticks.Curled like a pastoral crook.Curled up like hot paper.Ever darker and darker, like the shadow of advancing death.Darting skyward like a rocket.Dead as Pharaoh.She was a little dilapidated, like a house, with having been so long to let.Disappeared, like the shadow thrown by a passing cloud.Distress is forever going about like soot in the air.Drag like lead.Dry as a chip.Dry as a lime-basket.Dry as the desert.Dull as laudanum.Eccentric as comets.So evanescent that it was like a shape made in water.Excite him, as the donkeys on the green did Betsy Trotwood.Flat as a juryman.Fluttered like a bird with broken wings.Fresh as a lark.Fresh as butter.Gay as a butterfly.Gently as an angel’s hand.Gilded as a glittering toy.Glistened like the path of diamonds in the sun.Gloomy as a hobgoblin.Grave as a judge.Grave as an organ.Growled within himself like a little double-bass.Makes such head as a fire does in a raging wind.Heavy as the hand of death.Holds as tight as a horse-leech.Howl like a wolf.An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.Immovable as a pump or a lamp-post.Impossible as it would be for a full balloon not to go up.Interlocked like a couple of preposterous gladiators.Jerked his head like a bird.Lingering about like a bailiff.Mild as any lamb that ever pastured in the fields.Nodded like a plume.Sharp nose like a sharp autumn evening, inclined to be frosty towards the end.Oppressed like foul air.Pale as a candle.Pale as a muffin.Time passed away as a tale which is told.Passed out as quickly as a sunbeam.As plain to everybody as the sun.Plump as a peach.Quarrelsome, like a sparrow.Quiet as a sepulchre.Red as beetroot.Regular as military drums.Rough as a Sea Porkypine.In rows, like figures in a sum.Saunters … like an idle river very leasurely strolling down a flat country to the sea.Set, as a piece of sculpture.Shine like cherub’s cheeks.Sifted fine as flour.Silent as a flame that fails.Sleek as Mr. Pecksniff.Slight … as a dew-drop.Time slipping by you, as if it was an animal at rustic sports with his tail soaped.It came on slowly, like a cloud when there is no wind.Smart as a sixpence.Smiles like clockwork.Smooth as a new laid egg.Walked as softly as the ghost in Hamlet.Sparkling all over, like a harlequin.Split like a fired shell.Spurned like any reptile.Stiff like a state coachman.Sitting stiffly by, like a functionary presiding over an interview, previous to an execution.Straight as any plummet line.Straight as a crow flies.Sure as sun-up.Tender as a lamb.Thick as scarecrows in England.Tight as a gooseberry.Unintelligible as any dream.Vanished away, like spectres.Vanish like a breath.Vanished like a discontented fairy.Vaprous as a witch’s cauldron.Weak as a reed.Weak as flesh.White as ashes.Withered and pale as an old pauper.Within another, like the ivory balls in a Chinese carving.
