Saturday 18 September 2010

Literal Metaphors

Camp as a row of tents

What else can you call these? Leaping from the metaphorical to the literal? I thought the Greeks might have had a word for it, but if they did I can't find it. Read on, and you'll get the idea.

a few stops short of Barking
bent as a safety pin
camp as a row of tents
Can steal a scene without leaving fingerprints. (Richard Corliss)
cool as Antarctica
couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket
crooked: “more crooked than the angle A” Nigel Molesworth (How to be Topp ect by Geoffrey Willans) on his nemesis Sigismund the Mad Maths Master
dated: Looks more dated than Ulrika Johnson before she married that man off Mr. Right.
edge: “more edge than a circular saw” Fiachra Gibbons on Nick Hytner G September 26, 2003
fawn: Sebastian fawns better than Bambi
gay as laughing gas
he took every biscuit in the shop
How does that strike you? Wiv a sickenin’ thud?
John and Lionel Barrymore devour more scenery than a colony of termites. IMDB (sometimes chew, nestful)
lie like a flatfish
lie like a rug
low: If her IQ was any lower she’d trip over it.
low: so low he could crawl under a snake
more front than Sainsbury’s
moths "turn their antennae up at synthetic fibres" Times July 19 07
naval: as naval as a belly button
out like a light
so bent/crooked he could hide behind a spiral staircase
so crooked he can’t lie straight in bed
somewhere north of Cheapside
straight as a banana (or does that belong with "cuddly as a rolled-steel joist"?)
straight as a Roman road
strike: even the clocks are on strike
that sound you hear is Channel 4 pushing its luck Nancy Banks Smith in the Guardian
the plot contains more holes than a Swiss cheese
The wine flowed like cement.
three that spring athletically to mind are...
turn down: he turned me down like a bedspread
wafer-thin plot
Went down like a lead balloon
Word comes that the city of Seattle has been rocked (well, jiggled) by a smiley face scandal. straightdope.com
You need proper charts, a year’s supply of baked beans and Sir Ernest Shackleton if you’ve any hope of finding the plot. James Christopher, Times November 27, 2007


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