Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Black
Black as Alaskan sealskin.
—Anonymous
Black as a stack of black cats.
—Anonymous
Black as a thundercloud.
—Anonymous
Black as a tinker.
—Anonymous
Black as blindness.
—Anonymous
Black as Egypt’s night.
—Anonymous
Black as a sloe.
—Anonymous
Black as snow in London.
—Anonymous
Black as the Duke of Hell’s black riding boots.
—Anonymous
Black as the inside of a man who drank a bottle of ink.
—Anonymous
Black as the mantle that shrouds the blind.
—Anonymous
Black as Uncle Tom.
—Anonymous
Black as the bear on Iskardoo.
—Edwin Arnold
Thoughts as black as hell, as hot and bloody.
—Beaumont and Fletcher
Black as a coal pit.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Black as the tents of Kedar.
—Saint Bernard
Black as a young rook.
—Dion Boucicault
Black, like plumes at funerals.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Black as death.
—Lord Byron
Black as Gehenna and the Pit of Hell.
—Thomas Carlyle
Black as a crow.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Blak as fende in helle.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Black as a cave mouth.
—Irvin S. Cobb
Black as the devil.
—George Colman, the Younger
Black as Tophet.
—Joseph Conrad
Black as the mine.
—William Cowper
Black as if lightning-scarred or curst of God.
—Aubrey De Vere
Black as thunder.
—Charles Dickens
Black as beads.
—Austin Dobson
Black as a wolf’s mouth.
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Black as ebony.
—Alexandre Dumas, père
Black as night when the tempests pass.
—Frederick William Faber
Black as starless night.
—Phineas Fletcher
Black as a cassock.
—Samuel Foote
Black as the pit.
—William Ernest Henley
Blacker than a raven in a coal mine.
—O. Henry
Black as stormy darkness.
—Thomas Heywood
Black as gunpowder.
—Thomas Hood
Black as the fruit of the thorn.
—Thomas Hood
Black as your hat.
—Thomas Hood
Blackens like a thunder cloud.
—Thomas Hood
Black as the fleet from Aulis ’gainst doomed Troy.
—Richard Hengist Horne
Black as the wood of the gallows-tree.
—Victor Hugo
As black as any Moor.
—Jacques Jasmin
Black as the devil in a comedy.
—Thomas Killigrew
Black as the sliding water over a mill-dam.
—Rudyard Kipling
Black as the king of Ashantee.
—Charles James Lever
Black as sightless eyes.
—George Cabot Lodge
As blacke as deepest dark.
—John Lyly
Blacke as jeat.
—John Lyly
Blacke as the burnt coale.
—John Lyly
My Arab steed is black—
Black as the tempest cloud that flies
Across the dark and muttering skies.
—Adam Mickiewicz
Black as a [chimney] sweep.
—F. P. Northall
Black and glossy as the raven’s wing.
—Thomas L. Peacock
Black as winter chimney.
—John Phillips
Black as despair.
—John Phillips
Black as autumn’s sky.
—Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Black as a burned stump.
—Opie Read
As black as the steeds of night.
—T. Buchanan Read
Black as fiery Africa’s slaves.
—T. Buchanan Read
Black as black iron.
—Christina Georgina Rossetti
Black as pitch.
—Thomas Sackville
Black as the newly-pruned crow.
—George Sandys
Black as a funeral pall.
—John G. Saxe
Black as mourning weed.
—Scottish Ballad Percy’s Reliques
Black as Acheron.
—William Shakespeare
Black
As if besmear’d in hell.
—William Shakespeare
Black as incest.
—William Shakespeare
Black as ink.
—William Shakespeare
Black as Vulcan in the smoke of war.
—William Shakespeare
Black as a cormorant.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Black as Erebus and Night.
—Robert Southey
Black as the womb of darkness.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Black as crushed worms that sicken in the sense.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Black as thunderous night.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
As midnight black.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Black as flameless brand.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Black as ashbuds in the front of March.
—Alfred Tennyson
Black as sackcloth of hair.
—New Testament
Black as a raven.
—Old Testament
Black like an oven.
—Old Testament
Blacker than a coal.
—Old Testament
Black as Hell.
—William Thomson
Black as winter sky.
—Walter Thornbury
Black as soot.
—Voltaire
Black as a berry.
—François Villon
Black as with wrath.
—Alaric A. Watts
Black as black.
—William Butler Yeats