Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Rudyard Kipling
Absurd as giving bread-pills for a broken leg.Black as the sliding water over a mill-dam.Blowing like a grampus.Fortune changeth as the moon
To caravel and picaroon.As chill and as green as the sea.Clanging like a smithy-shop.Clear as summer-lightning flare.Clever as sin.Cling like the sloth.Curved like a stallion’s crop.Curved over like the edge of a waterfall.Dart like a rifle-bullet.At a safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood.Drooped like a lily tired
That lolls upon the stalk.The slow mists of the evening dropped,
Dropped as a cloth upon a dead man’s face.He dropped like a bullock.Men dropped like partridges.Drunk as Davy’s sow on a frosty night.As easy as a man dyin’ wi’ due warnin’.Faint as the visions in a dream.Fair as bar of gold.In a fit of fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet.Fizzled like freshly opened soda water.Flash like a heliograph.Fled like a dusky cloud.Flickering light like the jewels of a broken necklace.Glares like an excited cat.Glared like hot iron.Heavy as remembered sin
That will not suffer sleep or thought to ease.Howl like a wild beast.Idle, and mean as a collier’s whelp.Impartially as the grave.Impassive as the copper head on a penny.Jingled like a carriage horse.Jumpy as a cat.Keen as a sword.Leaking like a lobster-pot.Leaps like a bared sword.Leap like trout in May.Limber as a frog.Limp as a chewed rag.March like an endless rhyme.Are mixed as the mist of some devilish dream.Noiseless as a black shadow.Prancing like a bean-fed horse.Quietly as a cloud.Quivered … as a breakwater-pile quivers to the rush of landward-racing seas.Quivering like a man’s hand when he raises it to say good-bye.My head rang like a guard-room gong.Rang like a musket-butt on flagstones.Loud-voiced and reckless as the wide tide-race
That whips our harbor-mouth!Red as slaughter.A single roar like the roar of a mortar-battery.Roar … like the sound of a beast in pain.The pile of fish … shone like a dump of fluid silver.Shot like a rabbit in a ride.Shrank as the beetle shrinks beneath the pin when village children stab him in their sport.Silently as a cloud rolls out of the mouth of a valley.Singing … like the shouting of a backstay in a gale.The erect body sank like a sword driven home into the scabbard.Slid like an evil dream.Slow as a worm.Snore like over-gorged humans.Solemn as putty.Soothing as the wash of the sea.Lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spatters a barn door.Still as beggars at the gate of greatness.As straight as a beggar can spit.Sure as Time.Tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge.Thick as butter.A little thought in life is like salt upon rice.Gathered herself together like a watch spring.Trailing like a wounded duck.Unlovely as the corpse of a man.Unvexed … like the candles round a shrine.Whirling like a windmill.Thin-flanked woman, as white and as stale as a bone.Yellow and ill-fitting as the shuck on a dried cob.
