Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Spread
Spread out like a circus parade.
—Anonymous
Spreads like an inflammation.
—Anonymous
Spreads like ivy.
—Anonymous
Spreads like gossip.
—Anonymous
Spreads like honeysuckle in Virginia.
—Anonymous
Spreads like a lie.
—Anonymous
Spread like a rushing torrent.
—Anonymous
Spreads like measles in a country school.
—Anonymous
Spread like a drop of oil on a pool.
—Anonymous
Spread like a cinder shower from Vesuvius.
—Anonymous
Spreads … like the great voice of the sea.
—Honoré de Balzac
Spread like fingers.
—R. D. Blackmore
Spreads like fire.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Spreading his hands and all of his fingers, like the threads of a spider’s web.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Spread like wild-geese.
—George Chapman
The conflagration spread like a flaming garland.
—René de François Chateaubriand
Spread like fire among stubble.
—Sanford Cox
Spreads like a memory.
—Giosuè Carducci
Spread like fog.
—John Dryden
An innumerable crowd spread like a black robe over the shore.
—Hamlin Garland
Roots … spreading like huge creeping snakes over the surface of the evil.
—Ernst H. Haeckel
Spread, like distant morning in the skies.
—John Hughes
Calumny spreads like an oil-spot: we endeavor to cleanse it, but the mark remains.
—Madame de Lespinasse
The fancy of this exclusion spread immediately, like a gangrene, over the whole body of the monarchy.
—Sir Roger L’Estrange
Spreads like a snow-ball.
—William J. Locke
Spread like an ocean.
—Edward Lovibond
Spreading like a mighty flock of sheep.
—Walter Malone
Spread out, wide as the width of mind.
—Lewis Morris
Spreads like a surface.
—John Pomfret
Spread like wildfire.
—Ray (Collectanea)
Spread like a contagion.
—Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart
As the delicate rose
To the sun’s sweet strength
Doth herself unclose,
Breadth and length;
So spreads my heart to thee.
—Christina Georgina Rossetti
Silence spread … like water that a pebble stirs.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Spreads like scandal after a sewing bee.
—William Sage
Spread like evil ulcers.
—Seneca
Spread like a quenchless fire.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Spread
Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded morn.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Spreads, like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
—Robert Southey
Her rich locks spread like sunbeams on the wind.
—Torquato Tasso
Spread … abroad as the four winds of heaven.
—Old Testament
As the valleys are they spread forth.
—Old Testament
Spreading himself like a green bay tree.
—Old Testament
Spread like a halo round a misty moon.
—William Wordsworth
Spread like a sea.
—William Wordsworth
Spread like plagues.
—William Wordsworth
Spread like day.
—William Wordsworth
The slaughter spread like flame.
—William Wordsworth