Every year, English teachers from across the country can
submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors
found in high school essays:
These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of
teachers
across the country. Here are last year's winners.....
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 machine.
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 pm. 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. John and Mary had never met. They were like two
hummingbirds who
had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and
she was the
East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad 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. 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.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one
slender
leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
1996 - 2008. All Rights Reserved. Please review our Terms of Use, Mission Statement, and Privacy Policy.