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

William Makepeace Thackeray

Bald as a cannon ball.

Blue like an ancient Briton.

I blush as red as cochineal.

Bulged out in the sun like a pumpkin.

Calm as a Quaker.

Clean as the carving knife chops the carrot.

Dismal as a mute at a funeral.

Eager as a ghoul for blood.

Earrings like chandeliers.

Fabulous as Bucephalus or Black Bess.

They fall like grass before the mower.

Fragrant as lilacs.

Fresh as a man’s recollections of boyhood.

Gaudy, like a harlequin’s jacket.

Gracious as a duchess.

Happy as a rose-tree in sunshine.

A woman’s heart is just like a lithographer’s stone,—what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.

Leered at her like a satyr.

Lingering a minute, like outcast spirits, who wait, and see, through the heaven’s gate, angels within it.

Magnificent as Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth.

Malicious as Satan.

Pale as a tablecloth.

Pompous as an undertaker.

Proud as the Bourbons.

Puffy as a bolster.

Red as a poppy.

Restless as Ulysses.

Roars like a bull of Bashan.

Round and pale as a pair of suet dumplings.

Ruinous as guilt.

A shriek and a yell
Like the devils of hell.

Shrunk away tremulously, as fairies in the story-books, before a superior bad angel.

Eat his dinner as silently as a brother of La Trappe.

Snobbishness is like death in a quotation from Horace, which I hope you never have heard, “beating with equal foot at poor men’s doors, and kicking at the gates of Emperors.”

Soft as satin.

Sound as a top.

Stared aghast at her a minute, as Macbeth might on beholding Banquo’s sudden appearance at his ball-supper.

Stately as a queen.

Sulky as a bear.

Sure as comes the postman and the sun.

Tall as a grenadier.

Timid as a fawn.

Vain as a girl.

White as a ceiling.

I turned as white as cold boil’d veal.

White, and ghastly, like an army of tombstones by moonlight.

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