Sim•Ÿi•Ÿle

Noun

A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion, crazy like a fox).

I’ve fallen in love with the simile. A friend suggested I use one in an article I was writing. I had so much fun trying to come up with the perfect simile that I have been hunting them down in everything I read. This summer I’ve been immersing myself in the stories of Flannery O’Connor who—hands down—is the QUEEN of similes! Just for fun–here are a few of my favorites:

• His heart began to grip him like a little ape clutching the bars of its cage.
• Rayber felt as if he were fighting his way out of a net.
• His khaki trousers reached just to his hipbones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt.
• Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth.
• She could hear the wind move through the treetops like a long satisfied insuck of breath.
• The graduates in their heavy robes looked as if the last beads of ignorance were being sweated out of them.
• He heard the words drag out. He felt them pull out of his mouth like freight cars, jangling, backing up on each other, grating to a halt, sliding, clinching back, jarring, and then suddenly stopping as roughly as they had begun.