metaphors

Of curling waves

Tarka the otter enjoys his first exposure to the sea, with a wave being likened appropriately to a shell-fish.

'A...

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Arrish

'He galloped joyfully down a field of arrish, or stubble.'

A word now enclosed in a shrinking field of dialect...

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Yinny

'She ate it ravenously, half-standing in shallow water, yinnying at shadows as she clawed and swallowed.'

'With a yinny of...

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Goyal

'... and mossed trees in the goyals.'

A dialect word for a trench or ravine, also spelled goyle or or...

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triologisms

Purple-streaked stems

I never knew that hemlock grew alongside English fields,

Of purple hue, it poisons you, and life to death it...

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metaphors

Like a broken viper

A wildly meandering river likened to a viper broken by a buzzard - Williamson's inventiveness is a wonder, and almost...

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triologisms

Sun-splashy ripples

You can feel the warmth of a summer day with diaphanous wings darting over glittering ripples.

'She heard the rustling...

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triologisms

Age-long silt

Time flowing and settling in sand and sediment, steadily accreting new landscapes.

'As the river grew older, so the meadows...

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metaphors

Scent as colour

I like metaphors that use one of our five senses to convey another - here a visual image serves as...

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Chitter

'Hearing them, an ackymal that had been searching the streamside hawthorn boughs for green caterpillars flittered to the islet and...

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metaphors

Of kingfisher colours

This description of a Halcyon Kingfisher packs a rainbow of colour metaphors, from pink to green to blue and brown. ...

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triologisms

Star-streaming claws

Williamson's book is about otters and water, as the medium in which they thrive, mate, hunt, play and escape, bubbles and...

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