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Analogies and Metaphors

found this on another forum

Why English Teachers Retire Young

Actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two
sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances
like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience,like
a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without
one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the
country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at
a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.coli and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog
makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated
because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a
surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way
a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag
filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an
eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another
city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m.instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when
you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across
the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one
having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other
from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences
that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck,either,
but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on
a land mine or something.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was
the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap,
only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,
this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not
eating for a while.

22. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds
who had also never met.

23. The ballerina raised gracefully en pointe and extended one
slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around
with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard
bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to
put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple
it to the wall.
 
I'm gonna save them...
 
"This is my new antique lamp" ... Janice in Goodfellas.
"...she opened the door in her nightgown: Which is a strange place to have a door!" Groucho Marx
Red on the head like a spigot on a dog. paraphrased from unknown.
 
"Last night I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How an elephant got in my pyjamas, I'll never know." -Groucho Marx.

Seriously, how do you accidentally staple your tongue to a wall? The purpose of a metaphor or an analogy (or even a similie) is to form a linguistic construction to give the reader - or listener - a chance to relate to something outside their experience.

My Gawd, they're breeding them stupid these days, aren't they? Either that, or it's something in the water

I've long since stopped drinking water - ever since I found out years ago that fish fornicate in it...
 
Seriously, how do you accidentally staple your tongue to a wall?,...
..., - a chance to relate to something outside their experience.
Well, you have to admit, it is something outside your experience! So,... can you relate? :dunno:
My Gawd, they're breeding them stupid these days, aren't they?
Why yes they are.:dunce:
 
Well, you have to admit, it is something outside your experience! So,... can you relate? :dunno:

Why yes they are.:dunce:

I don't need to staple my tongue to the wall to understand pain - I've been in pretty constant pain for some reason or another for the last 20-odd years or so. So, I don't need an analogy to relate (and I often find analogies suspect anyhow. Most often, I've found that the analogy is brought out not to help the reader understand, but to give the writer a frame of reference...)
 
She approached me slowly, her clothes falling to the floor, like the parts that fell off my xj the last time I hit the creek run at nicholson ford, whispering sweet nothings not unlike the hum of a walbro fuel pump shortly before it quits.........
 
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