SIMILE 


As smooth as a baby's bottom
As snug as a bug in a rug
 As American as apple pie  As solid as the ground we stand on
 As big as an elephant  As sour as vinegar
 As black as coal  As steady as a rock
 As blind as a bat  As stiff as a board
 As bold as brass  As straight as an arrow
 As boring as watching paint dry  As strong as an ox
 As brave as a lion  As stubborn as a mule
 As bright as a button  As sturdy as an oak
 As busy as a bee  As sweet as pie
 As cheap as dirt  As tall as a giraffe
 As clean as a whistle  As thin as a rake
 As clear as mud  As tight as a drum
 As clear as crystal  As timid as a rabbit
 As cold as ice  As tough as old boots
 As cool as a cucumber  As useless as a chocolate teapot
 As crooked as a dog's hind leg  As warm as toast
 As cunning as a fox  As welcome as a skunk at a lawn party
 As cute as a bug's ear  As white as snow
 As dead as a doornail  As wise as an owl
 As deaf as a post Or try using some of these similes that start with
 As difficult as nailing jelly to a tree "like":
 As dry as a bone  (Sing) like an angel
 As dull as dishwater  (Act) like an animal
 As easy as ABC  (Eat) like a bird
 As fit as a fiddle  (Fight) like cats and dogs
 As flat as a pancake  (Work) like a dog
 As free as a bird  Like a dream
 As fresh as a daisy  (Soar) like an eagle
 As gentle as a lamb  Like fingernails on a chalkboard
 As good as gold  Like a fish
 As happy as a dog with two tails  (Racing) like a frightened rabbit
 As hard as nails  (Have eyes) like a hawk
 As heavy as lead  (Eat) like a horse
 As helpless as a baby  (Sleep) like a log
 As honest as the day is long  Like a moth to the flame
 As hot as blue blazes  (Eat) like a pig
 As hungry as a bear  Like a pile of rocks
 As innocent as a lamb  Like a rose
 As large as life  Like a screaming baby
 As light as a feather  Like stars
 As long as a month of Sundays  (Meandered) like a stream
 As loose as a goose  Like two peas in a pod
 As mad as a hatter  (Exploded) like a volcano
 As mad as a hornet
 As nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of
Read more at
rocking chairs
 As nutty as a fruitcake http://examples.yourdictionary.com/simile-
 As old as the hills examples-for-kids.html#p5YV6LX1kEe6u2BW.99
 As pale as death
 As plain as the nose on your face
 As playful as a kitten
 As pleased as Punch
 As proud as a peacock
 As quick as lightning
 As quiet as a church mouse
 As regular as clockwork
 As scarce as hen's teeth
 As sharp as a razor
 As sick as a dog
 As silent as the grave
 As slippery as an eel
 As slow as molasses in January
 As sly as a fox
METAPHOR
1. The detective listened to her tales with a
wooden face.
2. She was fairly certain that life was a fashion
show.
3. The typical teenage boy’s room is a disaster
area.
4. What storms then shook the ocean of my
sleep.
5. The children were roses grown in concrete
gardens, beautiful and forlorn.
6. Kisses are the flowers of love in bloom.
7. His cotton candy words did not appeal to
her taste.
8. Kathy arrived at the grocery store with an
army of children.
9. Her eyes were fireflies.
10. He wanted to set sail on the ocean of love
but he just wasted away in the desert.
11. I was lost in a sea of nameless faces.
12. John’s answer to the problem was just a
Band-Aid, not a solution.
13. The cast on Michael’s broken leg was a
plaster shackle.
14. Cameron always had a taste for the fruit of
knowledge.
15. The promise between us was a delicate
flower.
16. He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the
bone.
17. He pleaded for her forgiveness but Janet’s
heart was cold iron.
18. She was just a trophy to Ricardo, another
object to possess.
19. The path of resentment is easier to travel
than the road to forgiveness.
20. Katie’s plan to get into college was a house
of cards on a crooked table.
21. The wheels of justice turn slowly.
22. Hope shines–a pebble in the gloom.
23. She cut him down with her words.
24. The job interview was a rope ladder
dropped from heaven.
25. Her hair was a flowing golden river
streaming down her shoulders.
26. The computer in the classroom was an old
dinosaur.
Knowledge is the key to success.
27. Laughter is the music of the soul.
28. David is a worm for what he did to Shelia.
29. The teacher planted the seeds of wisdom.
30. Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day
31. Each blade of grass was a tiny bayonet
pointed firmly at our bare feet.
32. The daggers of heat pierced through his
black t-shirt.
33. Let your eyes drink up that milkshake sky.
34. The drums of time have rolled and ceased.
35. Her hope was a fragile seed.
36. When Ninja Robot Squad came on TV, the
boys were glued in their seats.
37. Words are the weapons with which we
wound.
38. She let such beautiful pearls of wisdom slip
from her mouth without even knowing.
39. Scars are the roadmap to the soul.
40. The quarterback was throwing nothing but
rockets and bombs in the field.
41. We are all shadows on the wall of time.
42. My heart swelled with a sea of tears.
43. When the teacher leaves her little realm, she
breaks her wand of power apart.
44. The Moo Cow’s tail is a piece of rope all
raveled out where it grows.
45. My dreams are flowers to which you are a
bee.
46. The clouds sailed across the sky.
47. Each flame of the fire is a precious stone
belonging to all who gaze upon it.
48. And therefore I went forth with hope and
fear into the wintry forest of our life.
49. My words are chains of lead.
50. But into her face there came a flame; / I
wonder could she have been thinking the
same?
Metaphor Examples for Advanced
Readers
Here are fifty more challenging examples of
metaphors. The slashes indicate line breaks.
1. The light flows into the bowl of the midnight
sky, violet, amber and rose.
2. Men court not death when there are sweets
still left in life to taste.
3. In capitalism, money is the life blood of
society but charity is the soul.
4. Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
/ And heaven but as the highway for a shell,
5. Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds, / Of
flowers of chivalry and not of weeds!
6. So I sit spinning still, round this decaying
form, the fine threads of rare and subtle
thought.
7. And swish of rope and ring of chain /
Are music to men who sail the main.
8. Still sits the school-house by the road, a
ragged beggar sunning.
9. The child was our lone prayer to an empty
sky.
10. Blind fools of fate and slaves of
circumstance, / Life is a fiddler, and we all
must dance.
11. Grind the gentle spirit of our meek reviews
into a powdery foam of salt abuse.
12. Laugh a drink from the deep blue cup of sky.
13. Think now: history has many cunning
passages and contrived corridors.
14. You are now in London, that great sea whose
ebb and flow at once is deaf and loud,
15. His fine wit makes such a wound that the
knife is lost in it.
16. Waves of spam emails inundated his inbox.
17. In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee these
votive wreaths of withered memory.
18. He cast a net of words in garish colours
wrought to catch the idle buzzers of the day.
19. This job is the cancer of my dreams and 50. My soul was a lampless sea and she was the
aspirations. tempest.
20. This song shall be thy rose, soft, fragrant,
and with no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
21. There, one whose voice was venomed
melody. Hyperbole Examples for Children
22. A sweetness seems to last amid the dregs of
past sorrows. It was so cold I saw polar bears
23. So in this dimmer room which we call life, wearing jackets.
24. Life is the night with its dream-visions
teeming, / Death is the waking at day.
25. Then the lips relax their tension I am so hungry I could eat a horse.
and the pipe begins to slide, /
Till in little clouds of ashes, I had a ton of chores to do.
it falls softly at his side.
26. The olden days: when thy smile to me was If I can’t get a Smartphone, I will
wine, golden wine thy word of praise.
27. Thy tones are silver melted into sound. die.
28. Under us the brown earth / Ancient and
strong, / The best bed for wanderers; She is as thin as a toothpick.
29. Love is a guest that comes, unbidden, / But,
having come, asserts his right; This car goes faster than the speed
30. My House of Life is weather-stained with
years. of light.
31. See the sun, far off, a shriveled orange in a
sky gone black; Our new house cost a bazillion
32. Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race
unseen by any. dollars.
33. But the rare herb, Forgetfulness, it hides
away from me. We are poor and don’t have two
34. The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at
the neck of the copper sunburned woman
cents to rub together.
35. Life: a lighted window and a closed door.
36. Some days my thoughts are just cocoons The car is as fast as greased
hanging from dripping branches in the grey
woods of my mind.
lightning.
37. Men and women pass in the street glad of
the shining sapphire weather. He's got tons of video games.
38. The swan existing is a song with an
accompaniment. You could have knocked me over
39. At night the lake is a wide silence, without with a feather.
imagination.
Her brain is the size of a pea.
40. The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft
perfume and sweet perfume. Grandpa is older than dirt.
41. The great gold apples of light hang from the
street’s long bough, dripping their light on My mom is going to kill me.
the faces that drift below, on the faces that
drift and blow.
42. From its blue vase the rose of evening drops.
Old Mr. Smith has been teaching
43. When in the mines of dark and silent thought here since the Stone Age.
/ Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies
there, My birthday will never come.
44. The twigs were set beneath a veil of willows.
45. He clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of I’m going to stay awake all night
sail, / Thinking that comfort was a fairy tale,
46. O Moon, your light is failing and you are and catch Santa Claus.
nothing now but a bow.
47. Life is a dream in the night, a fear among He knows everything about math.
fears, / A naked runner lost in a storm of
spears.
48. This world of life is a garden ravaged.
My dad is always working.
49. And therefore I went forth, with hope and
fear / Into the wintry forest of our life;
That was the easiest test in the
world.
Let’s be best friends forever.
Nothing can stop our team from
winning the championship.
My dress shoes are killing me.
He was skinny enough to jump
through a keyhole.
Going to Disneyland is the best
idea ever.
Carrie never stops talking.
I have told you a million times not
to do that.
We used to walk 15 miles to
school in the snow, uphill.
He is the best player of all time.
It is so hot you could fry an egg on
the sidewalk.
You are walking slower than a
snail.
Football is all he cares about.
Everybody knows that.
My mom works her fingers to the
bone.
His stomach is a bottomless pit.
Her smile was a mile wide.
The church was decorated with a
million flowers.
I ate so much at Thanksgiving, I
must weigh more than a whale.
We waited for centuries for the
latest game to be released.
It will only take me two seconds to
get there.
The mall is large enough to have
its own zip code.
This is so boring, just kill me now!
Hyperboles in Ads
Kids see advertisements all the
time, and many contain
hyperboles. Here of examples of
hyperboles in advertising:
A T & T - Reach out and touch
someone.
Citgo - There at every turn.
Brilliant Brunette shampoo - Adds
amazing luster for infinite, mirror-
like shine.
Citi - Citi never sleeps.
Disneyland - The happiest place
on earth.
Esso - Put a tiger in your tank.
Energizer - Keeps going and going
and going.
Geico - It's so easy, a caveman
can do it.
iPhone 5 - Browse, download and
stream content at blazing-fast
speeds.
Oscar Meyer - It doesn't get better
than this.
Redbull - It gives you wings!
Sherwin Williams - Cover the
earth.
 Visa - It’s everywhere you want to
be.
321 East - How good is our steak?
Last week a man who was choking
on a piece refused the Heimlich
maneuver.
For more fun with the English
language, check out these
Grammar Games for Kids.
Read more at
http://examples.yourdictionary.co
m/examples-of-hyperbole-for-
kids.html#xcQzqRO1pQXt6p6e.9
9 
Common Personification
Examples
 Lightning danced across the sky.
 The wind howled in the night.
 The car complained as the key was turned.
 Rita heard the last piece of pie calling her name.
 My alarm clock yells at me every morning.
 The avalanche devoured anything standing in its
way.
 Traffic slowed to a crawl.
 The door protested as it opened slowly.
 My house is a friend who protects me.
 The moon played hide and seek with the clouds.
 That book was so popular, it flew off the shelves.
 My car’s headlights winked at me.
 She is so beautiful the camera loves her.
 The stairs groaned as we walked on them.
 Winter’s icy grip caused people to shudder.
 Our vacuum hums a happy tune while it cleans.
 You need to cross over at the mouth of the river.
 Time flies and waits for no one.
 My flowers were begging for water.
 The ivy wove its fingers around the fence.
 The thunder was grumbling like it was angry.
 Hail pounded the houses and streets.
 The cactus saluted those who drove past.
 The wildfire ran through the forest at an amazing
speed.
 When I didn’t make the team, my dream of being
a star died.
Read more at
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-
personification-for-
kids.html#W7LjiCzP74VCfWKM.99
Common Examples of
Situational Irony
 A fire station burns down
 The marriage counselor files for divorce
 The police station gets robbed
 A fertility counselor has difficulty getting pregnant
 Posting on Facebook complaining how useless
Facebook is
 A vegan never eats meat but has some sausage
pizza because he is hungry
 The traffic cop got his license suspended

because of unpaid parking tickets
A pilot had a fear of heights
 A member of PETA wears leather shoes


The teacher failed the test
A man who needed of medical assistance is run
over by the ambulance.
 An anti-technology website
In the 1920s, the New York Times said solving
crossword puzzles was a craze that would die
out. Years later and even today, their crossword
puzzle is well-known.

Gunpowder was discovered in an attempt to find
the elixir of immortality.
 The Consumer Product Safety Commission had
lapel buttons made to promote toy safety. These
were recalled for having lead paint, sharp edges
and being a possible choking hazard.
 In the 1930s, the U.S. planted the Kudzu vine to
stop soil erosion. Instead of preserving, it chokes
trees and the plants it climbs on.
 Two people want a divorce and during the
proceedings, discover they still love each other
and remarry.
 A child runs away from someone throwing a
water balloon at him and falls into the pool.
Read more at
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-
situational-irony.html#7EwrCwhq5H5yTsGw.99