Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Maurice Hewlett

Adhere like ticks to a sheep’s back.

Backward like the long wash of a wave.

Came from all sides like conspirators from a wood in a tragedy.

Clear … as spring water in the high rocks.

Clung … like ivy to a tree.

Complexion like a pink rose’s.

Cruel as the sun.

Dance up and down, like a bear asking for supper.

Deadly as a night frost.

Dull as a mud-flat.

Eyes frosty blue, like a winter sea that is made bright, not warm, by the sun.

Eyes like a hare’s, that look sideways for danger.

Eyes like stars, robed in dull red.

Eyebrows like curved snow-drifts.

Face like a flame.

Grunting like some pounded animal.

Hair like weed.

An old lady with a jaw like a flat-iron.

Kneeling … like a painted lady on an altar tomb.

Set as lightly as a mouse-trap.

Love rushed through him as a river in flood.

Lived maddeningly, like a man who has a drumming in his ear.

As no two pots will boil alike, so with men; they seethe in trouble with a difference.

Meandered … like a lazy brook among water-meadows.

Meek as any baby.

Motionless, like a woman of wax.

Patient as death.

Pious as a virgin enclosed.

Rages … like a leopard caged.

Rage like a thirst.

Dry red, like old blood.

Roaring like a foundered horse.

Ruthless as the sea.

Scatter like smoke.

Shuddered like a man in a fever.

Sleek as a cat.

Snapped up—like a steel gin.

Snarled like an old dog.

Solemn as a dying nun.

Stiff as a pointer’s tail.

Surely as a blind man is pulled by his dog into the butcher’s shop.

Swayed like a pole in the tideway.

Sweating like a porous pitcher.

Swooped into the fray like a sea-eagle into a school of mackerel in a shallow.