Metaphors
 
 

 

 

 

George & Gosia's Website
 

 

REAL METAPHORS USED IN STUDENT ESSAYS
 
 
 Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its
 two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
 
 His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking
 alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.
 
 The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly
 the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
 
 McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a
 paper bag filled with vegetable soup.
 
 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 centre.
 
 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, the star-crossed lovers
 raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight
 trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the
 other from Peterborough at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
 
 The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full
 stop after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
 
 John and 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 colour of a brick-red crayon.
 
 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.
 
 Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
 
 The plan was simple, like my mate Phil. But unlike Phil,
 this plan just might work.
 
 The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get
 from not eating for while.
 
 "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving
 like a student on 31p-a-pint 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 landmine 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.
 
 The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one
 slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.
 
 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 cashpoint.
 
 The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an
 oscillating electric fan set on medium.
 
 It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing
 kids around with their power tools.
 
 He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he
 heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing.
 
 She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.
 
 She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he
 was room-temperature British beef.
 
 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.