Students return to school on Monday and I am spending this week preparing for my new job: English/Studies of Religion teacher to Years 9-12. I am hoping that throughout this year my English students will gain a love for figurative language. I wonder if they will write things as entertaining as these Examples of Figurative Language Found in NSW Year 12 English Essays. That would give me a real laugh.
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
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.
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature prime English beef.
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
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.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
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 Sex in the City comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot oil.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
Oh, Jason, take me! she panted, her breasts heaving like a Uni student on $1-a-beer 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.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
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.
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature prime English beef.
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
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.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
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 Sex in the City comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot oil.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
Oh, Jason, take me! she panted, her breasts heaving like a Uni student on $1-a-beer 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.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
posted by missmellifluous at 10:35 pm
10 Comments:
ePlenty more where these came from...
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don't speak German. Anyway, it's a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don't know the name for those either.
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.
I love these kinds of things. :)
Sorta like the Bulwar-Lytton contests.
They're great, John!
I like these too, Candy, but what is a Bulwar-Lytton contest?
A TV Guide crossword IS pretty easy. Funny!
Bulwar Lytton wrote the immortal words: "It was a dark and stormy night."
Every year a contest is held to display the worst opening paragraphs of a novel.
You can probably google it, but I am not sure I spelled the name correctly.
I thought these were actually very good:
She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. (very clever, IMO)
Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
Thank you for the good laugh!
my husband also thanks you
and my friend (I read them to her over the phone)
Well, first lines of novels are a whole 'nother field. My favourite is
As Wiener Schnitzel looked back on his career as a mathematician, he rued the fast life he'd led; his angry, drunken proofs, the cheap tawdry theorems scrawled in lipstick on the naked bellies of unconscious groupies, the lemmas he'd hustled for fixes in the smoke-filled back rooms of conferences, and determined to go back to his origin, to rationalize his singular life with the common denominator.
See here.
Now that is a classic...
Well done, still grinning,
Steve
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