Off topic: Hope we never have to translate these...
Thread poster: Patricia CASEY
Patricia CASEY
Patricia CASEY  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:47
English to Spanish
+ ...
Mar 12, 2003

Somebody sent me these metaphors taken from GCSE English Exams.

(They get better as you go down the list.......)



Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.



His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.



She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from doors and would fly up
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Somebody sent me these metaphors taken from GCSE English Exams.

(They get better as you go down the list.......)



Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.



His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.



She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.



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



McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.



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



Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the centre



Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.



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



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



Long separated y cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having leftYork at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Peterborough at 4:19p.m.at a speed of 35 mph.



The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full stop after the Dr.on a Dr Pepper can.



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



The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.



The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon.



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.



The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of Family Fortunes.



Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.



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



Oh, Jason, take me!\" she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 31p-a-pint night.



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.



Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from \"I Can\'t Believe It\'s Not Butter.\"



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



It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.



The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Glenda Jackson MP in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Robin Cook MP,Leader of the House of Commons, in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the suspension of Keith Vaz MP.



The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.



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 cashpoint.



The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.



It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.



He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing.



She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.



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



She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.



Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.



It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.



Cheers!

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Jack Doughty
Jack Doughty  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:47
Russian to English
+ ...
In memoriam
They're similes Mar 12, 2003

Very funny, but not a single one of them is a metaphor, they are all similes.



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Very funny, but not a single one of them is a metaphor, they are all similes.







No, I said SIMILES, not smilies!



But worth collecting, all the same.

Here is one from one of P.G. Wodehouse\'s novels.

\"They kissed, with a sound like a cow withdrawing its hoof from mud.\"
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Trudy Peters
Trudy Peters  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 11:47
German to English
+ ...
Love it! Mar 12, 2003

I especially like the \"deep, throaty laugh.\" I have a friend like that (and a dog.)



I also love Jack\'s contribution!


 
Patricia CASEY
Patricia CASEY  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:47
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
This one is my favourite... Mar 12, 2003


Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.



BRILLIANT!!!!



:0 :8





 
jerrie
jerrie  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:47
German to English
+ ...
These are so good.... Mar 12, 2003

that I\'m copying them for my daughter (just 2 terms into GCSE English)!

One of my favourites is also the vocabulary like ur whatever!


 
PAS
PAS  Identity Verified
Local time: 16:47
Polish to English
+ ...
Humphrey Bogart Mar 13, 2003

I remember this one from a commemorative article on Bogart in (I think) Time magazine:



It went like this (more or less):



\"Bogart taught a whole generation how to smoke, how to hold a cigarette, how to squint, how to exhale, but he kissed with the grace of a horse reaching out with its lips for an apple\".



Cheers,

Pawel Skalinski


 
PAS
PAS  Identity Verified
Local time: 16:47
Polish to English
+ ...
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Mar 13, 2003

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



This sounds like a paraphrase of:



\"The (space)ship hung in the air in the same way that bricks don\'t\"


 
Harry Bornemann
Harry Bornemann  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 09:47
English to German
+ ...
smiley codes Mar 14, 2003

Patricia,

you can get the smiley codes by clicking on the small icon on the right



...
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Patricia,

you can get the smiley codes by clicking on the small icon on the right







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Patricia CASEY
Patricia CASEY  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:47
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks a lot!!! Mar 14, 2003




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Marc Kuypers (X)
Marc Kuypers (X)
Local time: 16:47
Russian to Dutch
+ ...
Poor Phil Mar 15, 2003

I felt a bit sorry for Phil, but that\'s my favourite.



Thanks for a good laugh!



Marc


 
Palko Agi
Palko Agi  Identity Verified
Local time: 16:47
English to Hungarian
+ ...
I had a problem with teaching similes and metaphors, Mar 17, 2003

now I will have plenty of examples

Thanks a lot!


 
sylver
sylver  Identity Verified
Local time: 23:47
English to French
Thanks for posting Mar 18, 2003

Loved it, like the sight of a bottle of milk for an mischevious cat.

 
MJ Barber
MJ Barber  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 16:47
Spanish to English
+ ...
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever Apr 5, 2003

That is genius!!!



It reminds me of the time Homer Simpson was talking to the editor of \'The Readers Digest\' and commented that his favourite feature was \'It pays to increase your word power\', because, as he said \'It\'s really, really, really, .... good\'


 
izy
izy  Identity Verified
Local time: 15:47
English to German
+ ...
Now I read all the comments, Jun 11, 2003

and I'm still laughing!!

Just hilarious, thanx for sharing!


 
Jack Doughty
Jack Doughty  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:47
Russian to English
+ ...
In memoriam
Smiles, smilies, similes, facsimiles... Aug 6, 2003

Letter in today's "Daily Telegraph":
Sir,
My mother bought my seven year old niece an autograph book, and we have been seeking celebrity autographs. To its credit, No. 10 responded promptly, pointing out that Tony Blair received so many requests he couldn't sign every one. It hoped my niece might accept "a photograph of the Prime Minister with a facsimile".
When my niece read us the note aloud, that last bit came out as "a photograph of the Prime Minister with a fake smile".<
... See more
Letter in today's "Daily Telegraph":
Sir,
My mother bought my seven year old niece an autograph book, and we have been seeking celebrity autographs. To its credit, No. 10 responded promptly, pointing out that Tony Blair received so many requests he couldn't sign every one. It hoped my niece might accept "a photograph of the Prime Minister with a facsimile".
When my niece read us the note aloud, that last bit came out as "a photograph of the Prime Minister with a fake smile".
Nigel Swann,
Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
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