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Home  »  A Dictionary of Similes  »  Shrink

Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Shrink

Shrink as from a haunted place.
—Anonymous

Shrinking like an old man into his shoulders.
—Anonymous

Shrinks inward like a walnut.
—Anonymous

Shrinks like a Yonkers celebrity when he hits Broadway.
—Anonymous

Shrunk like a withered hand.
—Philip James Bailey

Shrink, as if I had been wandering among volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver.
—Charlotte Brontë

Shrink into a point like death.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Shrink up like a crushed snail.
—Robert Browning

Shrunken … like a withered branch.
—Buddha

Shrunk up like a bean in a pod.
—Alice Cary

Shrinking back, like one that had mistook.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Shrink,
As from a precipice’s brink.
—Eliza Cook

Shrink as a snail.
—Coventry Mysteries

Shrinks, like the sick moon at the wholesome morn.
—William Crashaw

Shrink like parchment in consuming flame.
—John Dryden

Shrinks as some fair tulip by a storm oppressed
Shrinks up and folds its silken arms to rest.
—John Dryden

Shrank
As one who sees a loathed sight.
—Maurice F. Egan

Shrank like the snow that watchers in the vale see narrowed on the height each summer morn.
—George Eliot

Shrank like a leaf in Fall.
—Eugene Field

Shrinking like a snail withdrawing into its shell.
—Herman Heijermans, Jr.

Shrunk away as a frost-bitten apple.
—Washington Irving

Shrunk away, within him, like a dried filbert in its shell.
—Washington Irving

Shrank as from a sudden and mortal danger.
—Mary Johnston

Shrank, like things with breath,
Whose ripeness feels the touch of death.
—C. F. Keary

Shrank as the beetle shrinks beneath the pin when village children stab him in their sport.
—Rudyard Kipling

Shrank, like boys, who, unaware,
Ranging the woods to start a hare,
Come to the mouth of the dark lair where,
Growling low, a fierce old bear
Lies amidst bones and blood.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay

Shrink as though Death were passing in his shroud.
—John Masefield

Shrank as at a prick of steel.
—George Meredith

Shrank—like parchment at the touch of flame.
—George Meredith

Shrink, as from a serpent in a knot of flowers.
—Henry Hart Milman

He shrinks, as from a viewless blow.
—Richard Monckton Milnes

Shrinking as violets do in summer ray.
—Thomas Moore

Shrink as though some cowardly sin were between them.
—Ouida

Shrank,
As a taper in sunlight sinks faint and aghast.
—T. Buchanan Read

Shrinks like scorched parchment from the fiery ordeal of true criticism.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Shrinks, as might love from scorn.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

Shrunk away tremulously, as fairies in the story-books, before a superior bad angel.
—William Makepeace Thackeray

Shrinks like a beggar in the cold.
—John T. Trowbridge

Shrink … like guilty things surprised.
—Edwin P. Whipple