Metaphorically Speaking…
There’s nothing like a good metaphor to jazz up a story or conversation. Our minds love to make connections, and when a creative author or speaker comes up with a compelling metaphor or analogy it makes the description come alive for us.
Author Raymond Chandler was a true master of metaphor. The man who created the fictional detective Philip Marlowe coined some of the juiciest phrases to ever grace the written page!
One of my favourite Chandler quotes is “The money disappeared into his pocket with the sound of two caterpillars fighting.” This described a guy who soundlessly pocketed a little bribe.
Or, how about this description of a babe: “She was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”
And the following description sure conjures up an indelible image…“She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don’t care much about kittens.”
Coming across a good metaphor really makes my day. Recently, whilst idly doing a little internet research (Okay, I was goofing off) I came across the following list of metaphors and analogies that are so hilarious I must share them…
These little gems were supposedly taken from essays written by American students and collected by the teachers. I don’t know if they are authentic, the guy who posted them had gotten the list in an email so he did not know either, but whatever the source, they sure are funny!
- Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its 2 other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
- His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
- He spoke with 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 dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
- Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
- Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
- Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
- Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
- He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
- The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
- Long separated by cruel fate, 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.
- A politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
- They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
- John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
- The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
- The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
- He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
- 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.
- The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of “Jeopardy!”
- Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
- The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
- The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
- “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
- 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.
- Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
- She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
- It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
- The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
- The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
- The revelation that his marriage of 30 yrs had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
- The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
- It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
- He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
- She was as easy as the “TV Guide” crossword.
- Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
- She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. (Ed. Note: I hope my sister catches this one!)
- She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
- Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first- generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.
- It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
