Extended and imaginative similes
Using your imagination you can make similes that are unique, amusing, or simply more interesting than normal.
Examples
| When Boomer danced he looked like a monkey on roller skates juggling razor blades in a hurricane – Tom Robbins | Arnold Schwarzenneger looks like a condom full of walnuts – Clive James |
| I love you like a fat kid loves cake – 50 Cent | He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight – John Randolph |
| Giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys – PJ O’Rourke | Now that I have my fire I’m as happy as a Frenchman who’s just invented a pair of self-removing trousers – Blackadder |
| Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them – Samuel Butler | Life is like a taxi: the meter keeps on ticking whether you are getting somewhere or just standing still – Anonymous |
| Society is like a stew: if you don’t stir it up once in a while, then a layer of scum floats to the top – Edward Abbey | A woman is like a shadow: follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows – Nicholas C. Hamfort |
| Listening to the 5th Symphony of Ralph Vaughn Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes – Aaron Copland | Men are like payphones: some of them take your money. Most of them don’t work, and when you find one that does, someone else is on it – Catherine Franco |
| That man’s ears make him look like a taxi with both doors open – Howard Hughes |
Exercises
Make imaginative similes to describe:
1. your teacher
2. an angry person
3. an ugly person
4. a beautiful person
5. your house