Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Thomas Hood
Active as a griffin.Bad as a blight.Bellowed as a hunted ox.Black as gunpowder.Black as the fruit of the thorn.Black as your hat.Blackens like a thunder cloud.His eye is blind as that of a potato.Blubbered like a child that’s nursed.Blue each visage grew,
Just like a pullet’s gizzard.Bowed, like a man sawing marble.Brief as sparkles from the flint.Brown as a bun.Buoyant as the thistle-down.Burnt like caustic.Buzzed like the bees when they swarm.Carol like a bird in spring.Cheap as sunshine.Chilly as a tomb.Clanging like a gong.Clings … like the weed in the face of the cliff.Cold, just like a summer grate.Cool as the pool that the breeze has skimmed.Crowd, like flocking linnets.Crumpled like a snowball in his fist.Calls daily like a dun.Dark as a cloud that journeys overhead.Dark as the grave.Dark as shadows be.A sudden truth dawns on me, like a light through the remainder tatters of a dream.Dead to sounds, as a ship out of soundings.Dead as bricks.Deaf as any tradesman’s dummy.Deaf as a nail—that you cannot hammer a meaning into.She was deaf as a nut—for nuts, no doubt,
Are deaf to the grub that’s hollowing out.Deaf as a stone—say one of the stones
Demosthenes sucked to improve his tones;
And surely deafness no further could reach
Than to be in his mouth without hearing his speech.Deaf as bricks.Deaf as God and Magog.Deaf as Pharaoh’s mother’s mother’s mummy.Deaf as the still-born figures of Madame Tussaud,
With their eyes of glass, and their hair of flax,
That only stare whatever you “ax,”
For their ears, you know, are nothing but wax.Devoutly as the Dervish.Dimmed and torn, like the remainder tatters of a dream.Dingy, like a grubby lot
Of sooty sweeps, or colliers.Direct as a railroad.Grew downward like old women and cow’s tail.Drive her foes from their savage job
As a mad black Bullock would scatter a mob.Drowned like pigs when they attempt to swim.Dull as a donkey.With ecstacy … like fathers that behold their infants crawl.Extinguish’d, like the vital spark in death.Eyes … mild as a gazelle’s.Fair is she as the dreams young poets weave.Fair as the wave-bleached lily of the stream.Flitted like a spark.As fluent as a parrot is,
And far more Polly-glottish.Fond as hounds are of running after foxes.Forsaken, as ships go to old Davy.Frail as dishes.Fret,
Like a pupil of Walton and Cotton,
Who remains by the brink of the water, agape,
While the jack, trout, or barbel effects its escape
Thro’ the gut or silk line being rotten.Lingering gaze, like a peacock whose eyes are inclined to his tail.Golden glow,
Like Iris just bedabbled in her bow.Green as the mantled pool.Hands like rugged bark.Heaved as in his breast the waves of life kept heaving to and fro.Humble as a stone.Humble as a worm.Insipid things—like sandwiches of veal.Jumps, like a sole from the pan.Keen as a hawk.Lapped her like a vapor.He lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way, tormenting himself with prickles.Linked each to each by labor, like a bee.As lost, as any needle in a stack of hay.Mild,
Like the soft snoring of a child.Mingle into one,
Like blended streams that make one music as they run.Murmured like the humming of a bee.Pale as frosty snow-drops.Pale, like cheeks that feel the chill of affright.Pallid as a corpse.Parch to the peppered palate like a pea.Pious as a Pope.Plain as the man with lantern.Plain as whisper in the ear.A pun is somewhat like a cherry: though there may be a slight outward indication of partition—of a duplicity of meaning—yet no gentleman need make two bites at it against his own pleasure.Quiet as if shod with felt.Return, like stars replenished at Joy’s golden urn.Ripe as June.Rising in the air like eagle on the wing.Rose like dim fancies when a dream begins.Rock’d like Yankee in his chair.Rolled in money like pigs in mud.Round as Norval’s shield.Round as platter of delf.A row, like a Quaker gone delirious.Ruddy as if baked by heat of sun or glowing forge.Running like a hunted deer.Rushed like a torrid hurricane.Rustling … like autumn leaves that tremble and foretell the sable storm.Scold like shrewish wives at tavern door.Serious … as one would whisper that a lion’s near.Shaded over, like rainy clouds just ripe for showering tears.Shook it like a terrier with a rat.Shriek,
Like a frayed bird in the gray owlet’s beak.Silent as a mummy.Silent as a stone.Sits careless of wave’s ebb and flow,
Like a love beacon on a desert coast,
Showing where all her hope was wrecked and lost.Sleek as silk.Time
Slept, as he sleeps upon the silent face
Of a dark dial in a sunless place.Slips like water through a sieve.Slow, as the strokes of a pump.A groaning intermitting sound like Gog and Magog snoring.Soft as a flute.Soft as flowers.Sounds upon the air most soothing soft,
Like humming bees busy about the brooms.Solid as glass.Sparkle like fairy boon.Speechless as a mummy.Past and spent,
Like stars extinguished in the firmament.Spit like hump-back’d cats.Spotted, as thickly as the leopard’s dappled skin.Squatting things like toads.Staring like Pythoness possessed.Starts like a ghost.Start like lightning greased.Steaming like a brewer’s vat.Stirred as tempest stirs the forest branches.Stirred, like insects settled on a dancing leaf.Subdued like Argus by the might of sound.Subdued and grave,
Like schoolboys when the master’s in a passion.Sudden as a snap.Sure as Dover stands at Dover.Swallowed her steps like a pursuing grave.Sweeping like rivers that seek the main.Swiftly as the dolphins glide.Go on as swimmingly as old Noah’s Ark.Like rudder to the ripple veering,
When nobody on board is steering.Tapping like woodpeckers.Thick as London fog.Thrash invaders rash, like barley with a flail.Deep bells toll,
Like a last knell over the dead world’s soul.Torn,
Like the remainder tatters of a dream.Tossed it just like a haymaker at work.Tremble like the stars in the sky.Tremulous the voice … like any one’s when jesting with a subject not a joke.True as the watchman to his beat.Twisted like an S.Like cold marble thou art all unfeeling.Unwatched, unwept, as commonly a pauper sleeps.Unwelcome and unasked, like Banquo’s Ghost, in walked the long-lost Spouse.Vanished … like the shadow of a cloud.Vivid as from painted glass.Warble like the birds in June.Warm as young blood.Warm as when Aurora rushes
Freshly from the god’s embrace,
With all her shame upon her face.White as Irish linen.White as parading breeches.Winks like the stars.Writhing o’er its task,
As heart-sick jesters weep behind the mask.Yearning, like the first fierce impulse into crime.Yellow as the amber.
