Thursday, October 25, 2007

Amusing Analogies and Metaphors

Every year English teachers from across the country submit their collections of 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. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
2. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
3. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
4. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. (How can you not, like, love that one?)
5. He was as tall as a six-foot three-inch tree.6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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. 9. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
10. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
11. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
12. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Wally. But unlike Wally, this plan just might work.
13. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
14. 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.
15. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

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