Alert to danger
This made me laugh out loud when reading Simon Winder's Danubia late one night. Parents ever-so-delicately trying to inveigle their children into the joys of Culture, and getting a visceral reaction. I love the 'threatened cats' simile. We would light-heartedly bring...
Breathing on a crystal
A limpid simile to describe a lovely human being. Maggie is simple and direct, but her innate charm and beauty cause considerable complexity of feeling among others. And let's not breathe on the crystal that lets the light through, we need it. 'To ask her to be less...
Looking good
The poor old boy, pallid and wan, in stark and merciless juxtaposition to the ruddy picture of health and well-being, Sir James. 'Skinned over for the occasion', beat that. 'Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a death's head skinned over for the...
Mental shallows
A splendid simile for a shallow-minded person, and I loved the 'nethermost sediment', in which murk turbid calculations are taking place as to whether her dying brother could possibly leave his wealth to any but his blood relations. He keeps the whole lot of them...
Great grassy hills
A beautiful description of a large-hearted calming character, who has a benign influence on those around him. We need more Cadwalladers around, quieting 'irritated egoism' and making it even a little ashamed of itself. 'Mr Cadwallader was a large man, with full lips...
As active as…
What a great simile to describe a fast-darting, quick-acting mind! Sadly, this vivid image also reminds me of a certain virus now prevalent, being similarly active and biting everything that comes near. 'With such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting everything that...
The thinker, with his metaphors, will illuminate the external world through intangible ideas that for him are intimate and immediate. Â
Source: Jorge Luis Borges, On Writing, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010, p. 6
More metaphors for those who missed these earlier posts. Â Enjoy!
The timbre of a voice
Voices are evanescent and yet they can stay with us all our lives; I can still 'hear' the voices of my mother and grandmother. Some voices are striking for their timbre and I liked this description of Dorothea's voice in Middlemarch. 'But what a voice! It was like...
As fit as …
I learned of this fitting simile for fitness in a phone call this morning. A friend was telling me about a life-threatening accident he had had, which put him in hospital for weeks. As they were trying to weigh up his survival chances, they asked his GP how healthy...
On being learned
Dorothea is the more studious of two sisters and marries an older bookish chap, to the consternation of her relatives. Here her sister Celia expresses their concern and her author uses a charming simile to describe erudition as some kind of insidious invasion of...
As relaxing as …
Casaubon is a serious-minded studious individual pursuing research so recondite that only he really understands why he's doing it. When his doctor tells him he needs to let up and take it easy for the sake of his health, he takes it like a convict's sentence of hard...
Of rising darkness
This simile struck me months before we had heard of COVID-19, and it worked its way to the front of the pipeline quietly and unobstrusively. Only now does it look ominous as we mask up and distance ourselves from other people's exhalations. 'Like an exhalation', a...
As agreeable as …
What a satisfying simile for something being agreeable, like the ease and relief of a successful sneeze. How odd that this simile has come to the fore just as we are at home isolating ourselves from pandemic, and sneezes are not to be sniffed at. Be sneeze-free and...
As naturally as …
Following the death of her husband, Dorothea dutifully tries to repress a deep wish to meet Will Ladislaw. George Eliot conveys beautifully the moment that her longing bursts the dam of her reasoning and restraint, using the simile of a suppressed sob. '... perhaps...
The spread of news
It's some time since I noted this simile for the effective spread of news. Now, re-reading it as we watch the advance of the Covid-19, I realize it could stand as a metaphor for the effective spread of a virus. Enjoy the simile and bee well, wherever you are. 'News...
Eyes meeting eyes
Dorothea stuns a silly, wilful and selfish young woman with her powerful, radiant kindness and, having meant to disdain her, the girl is undone by this unexpected sympathy. I liked the simile of blue flowers conveying the helplessness of her gaze. '... her eyes met...
A sack of scrap iron
A description of a huge, lumbering imperial frame, this referring to Tsar Nicholas I who succeeded his brother Alexander.'Though his heavy bones resembled scrap iron in a potato sack, he was handsome.'From the first and best volume of a trilogy of novels by the...
A falcon and a dove
Dali is the younger of Hungarian aristocratic twins, and here is an early encounter with the beautiful, elusive Russian who would become his wife. He pursues her, falcon-like to her fleeing dove. A glorious Hungarian historical novel - first of a trilogy - spanning...
Of striking light
A vivid image, of light striking mountains like a hatchet splitting the darkness. From the first volume of an excellent Hungarian trilogy covering most of the 19th century events affecting an aristocratic family in the Austro-Hungarian empire.'Bluish light struck the...
Like a bone in the throat
A vivid simile to describe the bother that mighty Austria was for Prussia. This is from a trilogy of novels by the Hungarian writer Lajos Zilahy (1891-1974), tracing the decline of a Hungarian aristocratic family in the 19th century Austro-Hungarian empire and into...
Going on a date
The photographer Robert Capa, known for some of the most iconic war photos of the 20th century, explains how unmissable a date with an invasion is for a war correspondent. I liked the analogy. Capa was killed in action when he stepped on a mine at the age of 40. 'For...
As neat and fierce as …
Something refreshing about this simile, beginning with the surprising combination of 'neat' and 'fierce' and then the even more surprising 'fairy castle'. But indeed, they are neat with their expected enchantments and imagined lineaments and they are fierce with...
Collective noun for epithets
I like this collective noun for epithets, 'artillery' suggesting a quickfire delivery of pithy comments, with the additional charm of a military echo in the resemblance between 'epithet' and 'epaulet'. '... an artillery of epithets.' Source: George Eliot, The...
The feeling of a cur
Mrs Glegg, as you can see from this simile, is not the most empathic or kind of characters. Here she seeks an easy target for her general frustration by turning on her younger sister who has suffered the consequences of her husband's obstinacy.'"Bessy, I'm sorry for...
Swimming in circles
A fine simile for a wife who after a good stretch of marriage, still presses all the wrong buttons with regards her husband; here she is likened to a gold-fish who continues to believe they are swimming in a straight line despite a life time of circling the fish bowl....
The chill of indifference
Philip is a sensitive and admirable character in George Eliot's classic novel, who devotedly loves Maggie Tulliver. He is hampered by disability and feels indifference acutely, here likened to a chill wind. '... and Philip felt indifference as a child of the south...
As irrelevant as…
Poor Mr. Dickson, but what a strong simile for irrelevance in the brightness of daylight. 'Mr. Dickson leaning against the doorpost with a melancholy pimpled face, looking as irrelevant to the daylight as last night's guttered candle.'Â Source: George Eliot,...
Like a kitten
This novel is to a great extent about the relationship between brother and sister Maggie and Tom Tulliver. She loves him fiercely and as a child is desperate for his affection and approval. Here she knocks over something he has been building and incurs his fury. The...
As helpless as …
The wonderful little girl Maggie, in a fit of pique and sorrow, hacks off her glorious dark curls and then succumbs to horror at the consequences, such as anger and mockery among the family. She hides herself in the attic to avoid them, which leads to other equally...
It runs in families like …
George Eliot uses an asthmatic simile to reveal the religious prejudices of her characters. If they considered that it runs in families 'like asthma', you may assume they didn't approve of chapel-goers. The light and gently humorous touch is typical of her delicate...
Life simile
What a surprising simile for life - at least in its easeful moments - likening it to a familiar tool worn to the shape of the fingers holding it, comfortably sitting in the palm of the hand which over time has itself shaped the handle. '... where life seemed like a...
Wrung from the soul
Maggie Tulliver is a deep-feeling woman of painful sincerity, and here words are wrung from her, with a wrenching simile. 'These words were rung forth from Maggie's deepest soul, with an effort like the convulsed clutch of a drowning man.'Â Source: George...
An unmapped river
A marvelous image for human destinies, usually well hidden no matter the efforts we make to discern them. Since this engaging classic revolves around a mill - and a related family - on the River Floss, the watery metaphor has particular resonance, and all the more so...
The garment of silence
The hum of insects, bees buzzing about the flowers, can be one of the most soothing of sounds and George Eliot has a beautiful way to describe this sweet song.'... and listen to the hum of insects, like tiniest bells on the garment of Silence.'Â Source: George Eliot,...
My head’s alive
Like an old cheese ... a surprising and original way to describe a lively mind, writhing with ideas and plans. Hope you have moments like this, when they flow so thick and fast that 'one knocks another over'. 'I think my head's all alive inside like an old cheese, for...
As open as …
A limpid simile for being open and transparent. If only more people were like Maggie Tulliver, although it can be said that her openness is not without difficulty for her.'... she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool.'Â Source: George Eliot, The Mill...
As gentle and powerful as …
An unusual pairing of adjectives and a surprising simile to embrace both. 'No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's...
As secular as…
A refreshing simile, surprising in its flavour, likening secularity to ice cream. 'Father saw himself as part of the New India - rich, modern and as secular as ice cream.' Source: Yann Martel, Life of Pi (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2003), p. 65...
As rooted as…
A good simile for a certain rugged tenacity, in this case referring to the nascent Christian community as it emerged from being a possibly evanescent sect into a full blown religion. 'Because it thought of itself as 'the true Israel', the Christian...
Twain on technology
This simile was devised by Mark Twain to account for his inability to use Edison's new-fangled recording phonograph as a means of dictating his writing. He clearly needed technology that could answer back. Curious to see the devil depicted as unsmiling,...
Girders like insect legs
An unexpected way to convey the chaotic structural metalwork of half-finished buildings. From Rory Stewart's engaging account of his walk across Afghanistan. 'On the flat roofs of half-finished shopping arcades, bare girders clustered like dead insect...
Where life meets death
A surprising metaphor for the inexorable link between life and death, with the same sense of something encroaching with age. From the slim, touching and spare novel by Robert Seethaler. 'Death belonged to life like mould to bread.' Source: Robert...
An artesian well
Peter Brown writes ancient history with verve and colour, bringing to life an era which can sometimes be passed over as dull if not dark, when nothing much happened beyond the implosion of the Roman Empire, followed by the ransacking of its buildings for...
Demons as microbes
I liked this analogy to help us grasp how demons were perceived in late antiquity, apparently more matter of factly than one might have thought. Like microbes, best avoided but not worth losing sleep over. But note the following comment, that early...
Rising like a damp-stain
In addition to the infiltration of Christianity, seeping into Hellenic culture, as this historian memorably puts it, 'like a damp-stain', I also liked description of the Roman Emperor Julian's (r. 361-63) clarity as having been borne of hatred. Whence...
Hungry Buddha
A wonderful description of Boris Johnson in the recent BBC debate among candidates for the role of Prime Minister. When I read this, I thought, 'That's it, that's how he looked!' Â The hungry Buddha looks on course to be the next PM. 'As Stewart squirmed...
Particles of human life
This week, glad to share fine metaphors both written by journalists. Here The Economist pays a suitably eloquent and moving tribute to Vasily Grossman's writing, capturing perfectly his skill in conveying the granular human effects of people being ground...
More plentiful than …
An ambiguous metaphor for plenty, since it is entirely subjective whether you consider hope to be plentiful or not. In other words, this is only a relative plenty. See other hope related metaphors and similes, such as Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot or...
Six ways to get lost
This is from The Little Clay Cart, a Sanskrit play probably composed around the 2nd century BC, and commonly attributed to a possibly mythical king and playwright called S(h)udraka. I liked the rambling explanation of the simple word 'lost' through half a...
Sticking like a burr
I've heard people describe someone as sticking like glue, or like Velcro, and burrs were the original inspiration for this modern sticky material. Woodnoth, then, was a bit of a boring hanger-on of the poet George Herbert. 'Woodnoth sticking to Herbert...
The press and vice
An extraordinary and vivid image of sin as something that forces pain to infiltrate every vein. Given the more pious age in which Herbert wrote, and his own great piety, I found this arresting and thought-provoking. It also neatly concatenates the two...
Good strong tea
A novel way to signal strong tea, its being so solid that it can support a mouse's weight. The more common version of the same idea has the tea 'so strong you could stand a spoon up in it'. For another tea-related simile, less innocuous, see Mervyn...
An aching loss
The occasional ache of something long lost - Leigh Fermor's likening it to an old wound; more less healed, but can still give you gip on a bad day. 'The loss of the journal still aches now and then like an old wound in bad weather.' For a quote-mosaic...
The taste of brass
You can feel it can't you - that cold-surface metallic sensation in your mouth?John Keats fell in love and fell fatally ill within a short period of time, parting definitively from Fanny Brawne when it was concluded that the best chance he had of surviving...
The backward bin
John Keats' letters are full of wry humour and playfulness, interwoven with a rage to live and frustration and despair at the TB which killed him within a few years. Here, writing to his beloved Fanny Brawne, I delighted in his offering to be to her as...
A protagonist in a lost world
This suggests an expansive speaker with vast ideas; one who embraces the world, makes perorations rather than utterances, and generally waves his arms about as he speaks.Miller is a master of refreshing metaphors and similes. 'He always talked against a...
A warm Asiatic smile
You can feel the warmth of this beaming smile, lighting up someone's face, feeling like a loving arm wrapped about their shoulder. 'That warm Asiatic smile which always spread over his face like nectar and ambrosia.' See George Eliot for another surprising...
On illusory madness
A fine description of Mervyn Peake's balance between bounding imagination and taut writing, rounded off with a vintage metaphor.'It remains essentially a work of the closed imagination, in which a world parallel to our own is presented in almost paranoiac...
Scepticism on legs
A delightful accusation of a doubting Thomas, his whole body an agglomeration of questions and disbelief. 'Truly, you are a walking interrogation and disbelief endowed with arms.' Source: Jose Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, trans....
Slow words emerging
A halting mode of speech, the words slow-emerging, like the tearing of pages from a long-closed book. That is how Dante's translator presents us with the first encounter with Virgil, who would be his guide through much of his journey.'His words emerged: as if with...
All-encompassing flow
The cadence of this metaphor has the abundance and freshness of clear, flowing water. It likens Virgil, whom Dante views as the poet who taught him how to write, to multiple sources of inspiration: spring, well, fountain and river.This liquid idea cascades naturally...
As warm as …
A surprising simile, something as ordinary and comforting as warm tea, here poured differently to describe a stream of blood. Steerpike is the worst person in the granite pile of Gormenghast - may we all be spared his scheming type.'The blood, streaming...
As ripe as …
Swelter is assailed by life-sapping loathing for Flay, who returns the compliment. Their battle is astounding for its intensity and outcome. Here a bursting simile for murderous hatred ready to pop.'... while Swelter, whose frustrated blood-lust was ripe...
As the falcon flies
Even the rhythm of this simile conveys something of a great bird's single, confident swoop to land precisely on a specific, awaiting glove.'But flying, as the falcon to the gloveSwoops home when signalled.'For another sleek and powerful bird in flight, see Henry...
As dogs in summer
Desperate people, condemned to eternal infernal cruelties, are likened to dogs failing to fight off the tiny tormenting assaults of insects.'On either side their hands beat in defenceNow from the flames, now from the burning sand,As dogs in summer fight the...
A milliner’s invention
Again, the charming Swelter, whose every move is offensive to one sense or another. See, for example, the sound of his feet when he walks. Here his gaping yawn makes nudity seem prim.'He does not listen for an answer, but yawns, his face opening lewdly...
Sucking at stones
Swelter is one of the less attractive characters in Mervyn Peake's sprawling, crawling, mossy pile of forgotten granite, Gormenghast. He consumes prodigious quantities of food and wine and is consumed by hatred (fully reciprocated).Peake depicts his...
Of guardian trees
A beautiful way to convey the kind, protective presence of someone quietly keeping an eye on the well-being of another. I hope you have such benevolence in your life, from both people and trees. 'As the days passed he began to know her better, in the...
Quick as …
Not an eye you would want settling its penetrating gaze on you, giving you a cold adder-quick assessment through the lace curtains of its blood-alley veins. This is one of many descriptions of a quite terrifying individual.'So alive is it, this eye, quick...
As huge as …
Mervyn Peake is a fount of original similes and metaphors. Given the granite-gothic ambiance of Gormenghast, it makes sense that 'huge' should evoke 'doom'. '... at their centre, between the brittle petals, lies a pool of indigo, translucent and as huge...
Like a wound…
A stunningly original depiction of the pink streaks of dawn resembling a sky-wound. '... as the dawn like a wound in the sky welled into her consciousness...'See also our bestellar review of this book, with its lavishly illustrated quote-mosaic, packed...
Life lived as a rose trellis
One of Rilke's translators used this surprising and touching metaphor to describe him. I like the idea of being - figuratively - a human trellis for beauty to grow upon. 'Roses climb his life as if he were their trellis.' Source: Quoted in Year of Wonder,...
The sky fallen down
One of the most English of memories is bluebell tapestried woodland in April - I have a particular recollection of this sky-carpet in a wood in Devon. Combined with sunlight dappling through the early leaf canopy, it creates an intimacy of delicate colour,...
Like sticks of barley sugar
It's years since I saw a stick of barley sugar, and this perhaps dates Donald Hall's otherwise quite timeless writing. But I like the resemblance of a tower to a fat, straight confection.This is from a lovely book - Hall lived in Romania in the early part...
Bullocks under the bonnet
Imagine the car bucking and lurching over pot holes and road bumps, creating the random jolts and yanks of a rodeo ride.This is from a lovely book - Hall lived and travelled in Romania in the early part of the 20th century, and wrote this affectionate,...
Like a burst of hope
A heartening simile in a vivid, gripping narrative of humans ground between the shifting tectonic plates of contradictory but equally totalitarian ideologies. There is neither much sunshine nor hope in the book, but such hope as there is is tenacious and...
Like sunlight on a landscape
You can see an overcast English landscape of rolling hills and fields, and a sudden break in the clouds pierced by a spotlight of sunshine.  This is a lovely novel, with the sunny wit of Jane Austen and the earthiness of George Eliot.‘And as for Molly, her...
Nervous as horses
A jumpy, unsettling opening to a powerful page that drives to the source of fury in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. You can imagine horses prancing, shying, frisking, snorting and whinnying, eyeing askance an oncoming tempest. You can imagine that what's to...
Eyes like lakes
A surprising simile: lake-like eyes reflecting the sky. Something touching too about the contrast of apparently wide open eyes, and a face that resembles a rocky, ugly landscape. 'His eyes were almost transparent as though in a country of ugly hills one...
Blank as a wall, wall as a blank
The identical twins Ladies Cora and Clarice aren't just lookalikes, but also one another's echo chambers. They live in their own quarters of the rambling pile of Gormenghast, driving themselves round the bend with thirst for 'power' and its resulting...
Dark and small
What a powerful simile, conveying something inward-turning and dangerous through its vivid portrayal of cranial size as a small, corroded bullet. His skull was dark and small like a corroded musket bullet. For other bullet related metaphors and quotations,...
Reasoning in vain
A convincing form of fruitlessness, as it's hard to imagine a pious vulture. The sister in question is an awkward customer, not easy for her entirely reasonable brother to reason with.'One glance at his sister was sufficient to make him realize that to...
Don’t stand there staring…
A colourful way to deter someone from staring at you and, in case of need, to insult your staff. Stenching mules. Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books are not only an imaginative masterpiece but also a ready sourcebook of new and inventive invective. Your...
As expressionless as …
Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy is packed with original metaphor and simile. In Titus Groan, the first book, I noted two similes for 'expressionless', both appropriate, though I think I prefer the second. See also his description of a blank stare.'Her...
Rain like remorse
Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast has a lot of weather, giving an overwhelming impression of dismal, dank, damp, darkness of cloud, storm and rain. Here a storm rages until it exhausts its own anger and then just pours remorse onto the earth. 'They had waited...
Wasps quick-bending
One of the many stretch metaphors used by Homer. When you see a comma followed by 'as ...' it can be a signal to take a good intake of breath to carry you through to the end of the image. Here it is feisty bees and quick-bending wasps who convey the...
Sweet-running river
Flowing like the sweet-running river it evokes, a meandering metaphor for Hector's strength and movement, likened to a thoroughbred horse breaking free and seeking out its remembered watering spots and pastures. Other riverine triologisms include:...
This is the world
Keats was one of the most life-loving people you could hope to meet, grasping with all his force every chance of happiness, even evanescent, and despite being repeatedly assaulted by unforgiving 'Circumstances'. He looks life's fragility in the eye without flinching,...
As cold as …
A letter from Keats to his beloved Fanny, with a kindly injunction to wrap up warmly. I loved the solicitude and the bracingly original simile for a chill wind.'You will be as cold as a topsail in a north latitude – I advise you to furl yourself.'...
A sky of rags
A marvelous view of a heavily clouded sky; you can imagine vast firmament rags being saturated with water by a giant hand, before being crumple-stuffed into the welkin.'... and above the blurred outline of the Twisted Woods the sky was choked with crumpled...
Fuchsia and ruby
A gift from the eccentric but kind-hearted and protective physician to the young daughter of the Earl and Countess of Gormenghast, slightly neglected by her parents for being but a girl, and having a certain shyness and feistiness.A striking description...
Sourdust’s skin
Sourdust is the aged, dusty, crumbling Master of Ceremonies and custodian of endless ritual, rites and rules in the world of Gormenghast castle, having digested a thousand tomes of protocol. Â He shuffles and coughs his way in reminding the Earl, Countess...
Prunesquallor’s voice
The physician of Gormenghast is one of the most likeable, humane and sane of the colourful characters that people the story; while being every bit as idiosyncratic as the rest of them. His strange voice is complemented by a slightly grating,...
A rolling boulder
Nanny Slagg meets an old man of the Dwellers, the humble people who live limpet-like on the outer walls of Gormenghast castle. Here he greets the castle's envoy with the deference expected. The description of his voice suggests a low-frequency...
Newly born, oldly wise
A lilting double simile here, each with a timeless simplicity. Let's add them to the common stock and start to describe things as being 'old as the world', or 'wise as the roots of trees'. Or you could shorten the last one to 'wise as trees', given our...
Rich with rust
An unusual simile for rust, though of course, once seen, it seems natural. A beech hedge in winter has an intense and often uniform rust colour. '... and the corners were stacked with old weapons that were as rich with rust as a hedge of winter beech.' See...
Ignoring your foes
You can see Mr Flay side-stepping the presence of his mortal foe, Swelter, as one side-steps other unpleasantness in one's path. Perhaps he could delicately pinch his fingers to his nose to preserve himself from any sweltering smells.'It had therefore been...
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