The Language of Metaphor

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Popeyesays

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Saundra julian put this up on another forum, a tip of the hat to Saundra:

with your writing...

Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their
collections of actual 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. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides
gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances
like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. 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.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a
bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag
filled with vegetable soup.

11. 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

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. 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.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences
that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was
the East River.

18. 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.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are won't to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,
this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not
eating for a while.

22. 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.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around
with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
 

Popeyesays

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Some of them remind me of Mickey Spillane stories

Regards,
Scott
 

Oberon

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I think I can use a few of those. I like the underpants in the dryer and grandpa's rusted trap.
 

Celia Cyanide

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I LOVE this list. I seriously never get tired of it. Although some aren't exactly bad, just not well worded. This one:

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,
this plan just might work.

is pretty bad, but might actually be kind of funny in dialog. Tense problem, but whatevs.
 

Soccer Mom

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I've seen this list many times and I never, ever get tired of it.

No. 16 is my favorite.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
 

Popeyesays

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A simile is a class of metaphor. Technically if the word "like" or "as" is used it's a simile. If that word does not appear it's a metaphor (generic).

Metaphor means to use: "1 : a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money); broadly : figurative language --" M/W dictionary.

In my opinion the more creative the metaphor the more apropos to the writing it is.

Regards,
Scott
 

Tracy

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My nearly 12-year old son is into writing in a big way. He got to 10,000 words of one novel before abandoning it (although he says it's not abandoned, just put aside for the moment - so he's shaping up to be a real writer, with all the excuses going!). He is interested in what I have to tell him about writing skills, and is happy to share what he has learned. So there was a thread on writing on his home-school teens forum, and here's what he had to say about metaphors:

"In a book I read it said

'her emphasis on the word 'my' was short but strong,'

Whereas I would put it

'Her emphasis on the word 'my' was short but strong, like a meow of a starving cat rather then a raor of a lion'

but don't be too flowery, like

'her emphasis on the word 'my' like a meow of a starving cat rarther then a lion roaring, like a frog croaking rather then tony blair talking. like a blink of the eye rather then a season changing.'

that's called 'purple' which is too flowery, too over the top."


A few thoughts occur:

The quote from the published book: 'her emphasis on the word 'my' was short but strong,' - that's pretty awful to start with, isn't it?

I thought the example of what wasn't flowery, was!

And I loved his example of the over-flower stuff. (Tony Blair was the British Prime Minister at the time of writing).
 

Jamesaritchie

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metaphor

Would this technically be a metaphor?

"Holding a gun makes me feel powerful, like the way God must feel when He's holding a gun." --Homer Simpson


That would be an analogy. A simile compares one thing to another using "as" or "like," but these words do not automatically make something a simile. A metaphor says one thing actually is another thing. The sky was a dome of polished brass.
 
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