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

William Shakespeare

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Age like winter bare.

Alike as my fingers is to my fingers.

Alone, like one that had the pestilence.

Amazed, as one that unaware
Hath dropp’d a precious jewel in the flood.

Anger is like a full-hot horse, who being allowed his way, self-mettle tires him.

As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint.

Behold mine arm
Is like a blasted sapling, withered up.

Asleep,
As Cerberus at Thracian poet’s feet.

Barred, like one infectious.

Brain as barren
As banks of Libya.

Bearded like the pard.

Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure and no pace perceived.

Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s song.

Another stain, as big as hell can hold,
Were there no more but it.

Bitter as coloquintida.

Bitter to me as death.

Black as Acheron.

Black
As if besmear’d in hell.

Black as incest.

Black as ink.

Black as Vulcan in the smoke of war.

Like a mildewed ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother.

Bloody as the hunter.

Blue as bilbery.

Blunt as the fencer’s foils, which hit, but hurt not.

Blush … like a black dog, as the saying is.

Boundless as the sea.

Bountiful
As mines of India.

Bowed like bondmen.

Breaking his oath and resolution, like
A twist of rotten silk.

Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile.

Brief as the lightning in the collied night.

Broad and general as the casing air.

Brown in hue as hazel nuts.

Burn like mines of sulphur.

Calm as virtue.

Carouse together
Like friends long lost.

Carved like an apple-tart
Here’s snip, and nip, and cut, and slish, and slash,
Like a censer in a barber’s shop.

Catch at us, like strumpets.

Chaste as Diana.

Chaste as ice.

Chaste as is the bud ere it be blown.

Chaste as the icicle.

Chaste as unsunned snow.

Cheap as lies.

Cheap as stinking mackerel.

Checked like a bondman.

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp.

Had wet their cheeks, like trees bedashed with rain.

Chide as loud
As thunder.

More clamorous than a parrot against rain.

Clawed like a parrot.

Clean as a sound sheep’s heart.

Clear
As morning roses newly washed with dew.

Clear as the summer’s sun.

Clear
As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.

Countenance as clear as friendship wears at feasts.

Clear as founts in July.

Cold as a dead man’s nose.

Cold as a snowball.

My belly is as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the veins.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.

That comfort comes too late;
’Tis like a pardon after execution.

Comfortless
As frozen water to a starved snake.

Commands like a full soldier.

Common as the stairs
That mount the Capitol.

Concave as a covered goblet, or a worm-eaten nut.

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopped,
Doth burn the heart to cinders.

Confident, as is the falcon’s flight.

Confounds thy fame, as whirlwinds shake fair buds.

But I am as constant as the northern star
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.

Contention, like a horse full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose, and bears down all before him.

Contract and purse thy brow together
As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain
Some horrible conceit.

Countenance as clear as friendship wears at feasts.

Wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled, and inseparable.

Cowardly as a wild duck.

Cream and mantle, like a standing pond.

Creep like shadows.

Creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

Crest-fallen as a dried pear.

Crow like chanticleer.

Curd, like eager droppings into milk.

Curst, and shrewd as Socrates’ Xantippe.

Cursing like a very drab.

More dangerous, than baits to fish.

Dark as Egypt.

Dark as Erebus.

Dark as hell.

Dark as ignorance.

Their influence darts
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins of desolate society.

Dead as earth.

Death lies on her, like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

The venom clamours of a jealous woman poison more deadly than a dog’s tooth.

Deaf as the sea.

Dear as my finger.

As dear to me as life itself.

Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty.

As soon decay’d and done
As is the morning’s silver-melting dew.

Deep as hell.

Deep as the sea.

Degraded, like a hedge-born swain
That doth presume to boast of gentle blood.

These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume.

Difference … between jet and ivory.

His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered.

Dive, like buckets, in concealed wells.

Divide me like a bribe-buck, each a haunch.

Doubtful it stood;
As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art.

Droops … like over-ripen’d corn
Hanging the head of Ceres’ plenteous load.

Dropped, as by a thunder-stroke.

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum.

Droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.

Dry as dust.

Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.

Dull as night.

Duller than a great thaw.

Easy as a down-bed.

Easy as lying.

Easy as to set dogs on sheep.

Easy as thanks.

I was of late as petty to his ends,
As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf
To his grand sea.

An eye, like Mars, to threaten and command.

Her eyes, as murder’d with the view,
Like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew.

Thy eyes’ windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life.

His eye
Red as ’twould burn Rome.

His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret.

Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath’d their light,
And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,
Till they might open to adorn the day.

Fair as any mother’s child.

Fair as day.

Fair as text B in a copy-book.

Her face as fair as tho’ she had look’d on Paradise, and caught its early beauty.

Falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.

False as dice.

False as dicers’ oaths.

False as hell.

False
As stairs of sand.

False as water.

False … as wolf to heifer’s calf.

Familiar as his garter.

Familiar in his mouth as household words.

Talks as familiarly of roaring lions
As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs.

As far from help as limbo is from bliss.

So far from sounding and discovery,
As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.

Fast
As lagging fowls before the northern blast.

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum.

Entrap the hearts of men, faster than gnats in cobwebs.

Faster than thought or time.

Fat as butter.

Fat as tame things.

Fat and fulsome to mine ear
As howling after music.

Fawned like hounds.

As corn o’ergrown by weeds, so heedful fear
Is almost chok’d by unresisted lust.

Trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon’s bells.

Fearful as a siege.

Feed like an oxen at a stall.

Firm as faith.

Firm as rocky mountains.

As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your French crown for your taffeta punk, as Tib’s rush for Tom’s fore-finger, as pancake for Shrove-Tuesday, a morris for May-day, as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding queen to a wrangling knave, as the nun’s lip to the friar’s mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin.

Fleeter than the roe.

Flow as hugely as the sea.

Fluent as the sea.

Fly like chidden Mercury from Jove.

Like falcon to the lure, away she flies.

Fly like thought.

Like soldiers, when their captain once doth yield,
They basely fly.

Follow, as the night the day.

Fonder than ignorance.

Fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings.

Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun: it shines everywhere.

Foul as slander.

Foul as Vulcan’s stithy.

Free as mountain winds.

Freer than a jailer.

Fresh as a bridegroom.

Fresh as Dian’s visage.

Fresh as morning’s dew distill’d on flowers.

Frets like a gummed velvet.

Fruitful as the free elements.

Fruitful as the land that feeds us.

As full of labour as a wise man’s art.

Full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat.

Full of spirit as the month of May.

As full of sorrows as the seas of sands.

As fat and fulsome to mine ear
As howling after music.

Gabble like tinkers.

Gaunt as a grave.

Broad and general as the casing air.

Gentle as the cradle-babe.

They are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet.

Gently as any sucking dove.

Thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals.

Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperse to naught.

Glowed like plated Mars.

Gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.

Gray as glass.

Green as leeks.

Grew like the summer’s grass.

Grin like lions
Upon the pikes o’ the hunters.

Gripe as hard Cassibelan.

Gross as a mountain.

Gross as ignorance made drunk.

Ground,
Like a thousand vanquish’d men in bloody flight.

Grew like the summer grass.

Hacked like a hand-saw.

Her hair, like golden threads, play’d with her breath.

Hung like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard.

His listless hand
Hung like dead bone within its withered skin.

Hangs like flax on a distaff.

Hang me in a bottle like a cat, and shoot at me.

Hang upon him like a disease.

Hang upon my tongue like a new-married wife upon her husband’s neck.

She hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear.

Happy as the fairest of all.

Hard as steel.

Hard as the palm of ploughman.

Hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end.

Hasty as fire.

Hasty, like a Scotch jig.

I do hate him as I do hell pains.

Hate is as an unfilled can.

Hateful as Cocytus’ misty mouth.

Hateful to me as the reek of a lime-kiln.

Haunt thee like a wicked conscience.

I hang the head
As flowers with frost, or grasses bent with storms.

All in a heap, like a slaughtered lamb.

As far from help as limbo is from bliss.

High as heaven itself.

Hollow as a ghost.

Honest as the skin between his brows.

Hooted at like an old tale.

Hop as light as bird from brier.

Who builds his hope in air of your fair looks,
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast;
Ready, with every nod, to tumble down
Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

Hot as coals of glowing fire.

Hot as gunpowder.

Hot as molten lead.

Hot as monkeys.

Hot as Perseus.

Huge as high Olympus.

Humbly as they used to creep
To holy altars.

Humorous as winter.

Hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much.

Hush as death.

Hushed as midnight.

Ignorant as dirt.

More inconstant than the wind.

Indistinct as water is in water.

Innocent as grace itself.

Wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled, and inseparable.

Invisible,
As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a steeple.

Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune, and harsh.

Jealous as a Barbary cock pigeon over his hen.

Keen as razor’s edge.

Kill one another by the look, like cockatrices.

Even as poor birds, deceived with painted grapes,
Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw,
Even so she languisheth in her mishaps,
As those poor birds that helpless berries saw.

Comes too late;
’Tis like a pardon after execution.

Laugh, like parrots, at a bag-piper.

Lawful as eating.

Leads them like a thing
Made by some other deity than nature.

Lecherous as a monkey.

Level as the cannon to his blank.

Liberal as the casing air.

Lies like truth.

Trifles light as air.

No more like my father
Than I to Hercules.

Alike as my fingers is to my fingers.

As like, as rain to water, or devil to his dam.

Like as eggs.

As like this as a crab is like an apple.

As like you,
As cherry is to cherry.

She lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame, or a dowager,
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

Loathsome as a toad.

Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Speak as loud as Mars.

Love is like a child,
That longs for everything that he can come by.

Love like a shadow flies, when substance love pursues;
Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.

Love, that comes too late,
Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,
To a great sender turns a sour offence,
Crying, that’s good that’s gone.

Low as to the fiends.

As low as hell’s from heaven.

Luscious as locusts.

Lustrous as ebony.

Mad as Ajax.

More mad
Than Telamon for his shield.

Mad as the vexed sea.

Magnanimous as Agamemnon.

Maliciously like poison.

Men, like butterflies,
Shew not their mealy wings but to the summer;
And not a man, for being simply man,
Hath any honour.

Cream and mantle, like a standing pool.

Meek, like a bankrupt beggar.

Melancholy as a gib cat.

Melancholy as a lodge in a warren.

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.

Merry as the day is long.

As merry, as when our nuptial day was done,
And tapers burned to bedward.

Merry as crickets.

Mild as a dove.

For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich;
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,
So honor peereth in the meanest habit.
What, is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful.

Modest as justice.

Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phœbus.

Modest as a dove.

Momentary as a sound.

Mortal as an old man’s life.

Sweet and musical as bright Apollo’s lute strung with his hair.

Naked as the vulgar air.

Notched him like a carbonado.

Obedient as the scabbard.

Old as Sibylla.

Open as day, for melting charity.

Overcome us like a summer’s cloud.

O’erwhelming his fair sight,
Like misty vapors when they blot the sky.

Pale as a clout in the versal world.

Pale, as if a bear was at his heels.

Pale as milk.

Pale lustre like the silver moon.

Pale as his shirt.

A sudden pale,
Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose.

Parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropped.

Pass’d by me
As misers do by beggars.

Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy.

Patient as a gentle stream.

Patient as the female dove.

Perfumed like a milliner.

It shall as level to your judgment pierce
As day does to your eye.

Piercing as the mid-day sun.

And pity, like a naked, new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

Plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself.

Plain as way to parish church.

Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven.

Plead like angels, trumpet-tongued.

As plenty as blackberries.

Poor as Job.

Poor as winter.

Positive as the earth is firm.

Prate like one i’ the stocks.

More precious
Than the rich-jewell’d coffer of Darius.

Prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep.

Pricks like thorn.

Prime as goats.

Cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve.

Promises are like Adonis’ gardens,
That one day bloom’d and fruitful were the next.

Proud as an enjoyer.

Pure as grace.

Pure as sin with baptism.

Quarrelous as the weasel.

Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound’s mouth.

Quiet as a lamb.

Rage like an angry bear, chafed with sweat.

Ragged as Lazarus.

Rank as a fox.

Rank as any flax-wench.

Rash as fire.

Ravish like enchanting harmony.

Ready as a borrower’s cap.

Like an over-charged gun, recoil.

Red as fire.

Red as Mars.

Red as new-enkindled fire.

Red as Titan’s face.

Whose rage doth rend
Like interrupted waters.

Resemble …
As much as an apple doth an oyster.

Resounds like heaven’s thunder.

Rheumatic as two dry toasts.

And I as rich in having such a jewel,
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.

Rich …
As is the ooze and bottom of the sea,
With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.

Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury.

Rotten
As ever oak or stone was sound.

Were she as rough
As are the swelling Adriatic seas.

Ruled, like a wandering planet.

Ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning.

Sad as night.

Safe as Priam is in Ilion.

Scald like molten lead.

Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper.

Hath more scars of sorrow in his heart
Than foeman’s marks upon his batter’d shield.

Secure as sleep.

Sever’d, like a flight of fowl
Scatter’d by winds and high tempestuous gusts.

Shaked like a coward.

Shake like a field of beaten corn.

Shakes, like a thing unfirm.

Would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp.

Sharp as my needle.

More sharp than filed steel.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child.

Nose was as sharp as a pen.

Sharp as his spur.

Shine
As gloriously as the Venus of the sky.

Shiver’d like an egg.

Short as any dream.

Curst and shrewd as Socrates’ Xanthippe.

Shrieks like mandrakes’ torn out of the earth.

Sighing like furnace.

Sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A, B, C.

Sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam.

Simpler than the infancy of truth.