Thank you for this great list of funny metaphors and similes below (in the comments section)! THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED! Any entries received from this point forward will not be counted toward the contest. We’ll be announcing the winners very soon! Keep an eye out!
At Writer’s Relief we read a lot of metaphors and similes in poetry and prose, and we have to admit, we sometimes love bad and funny ones as much as we love good ones. We’ve decided to hold a contest to celebrate bad and funny metaphors and similes. We want to make a great list of funny metaphors, extended metaphors, and bad metaphor examples. Include your bad similes as well! We hope you’ll add to our metaphor and simile list.
One winner will get a FREE Writer’s Relief T-shirt of his or her choice!
The worse your metaphor or simile, the better!
To enter your bad or funny metaphor or simile, simply submit your metaphor or simile in the comments area below. Do NOT e-mail your entry. It MUST be posted as a comment. If you win, we’ll contact you using the e-mail address that you enter in the blog comment form.
Here are a few examples of bad and funny metaphors and similes to get you going:
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
The toddlers looked at each other as if they had just been told their mutual funds had taken a complete nosedive.
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
She was a couch potato in the gravy boat of life, flopping dejectedly on the sofa.
It will take a big tractor to plow the fertile fields of his mind.
See how fun that is? Do your worst. We can’t wait to read your bad and funny metaphors!
The Difference Between Metaphors And Similes
Metaphors and similes are often confused. The definition of a metaphor is (loosely) a figure of speech that suggests an analogy between objects or ideas. Metaphor example: He was a fish out of water.
The definition of a simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things, usually preceded by “like” or “as.” Simile example: She swims like a fish.
Common Metaphor Mistakes To Avoid
(aka Hints To Help You Write A Bad Or Funny Metaphor)
We’ve compiled a list of three major problems in metaphor construction:
1. Mixed Metaphor. This is a metaphor that contains completely unrelated comparisons.
Suddenly, she was pinned by the spotlight, a struggling fish caught in a spider’s web.
Or this, from Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities: All at once he was alone in this noisy hive with no place to roost.
2. Inappropriate Analogies. If you’re writing about a European woman in the 1700s, don’t say, Her eyes held the glow of a late-night laptop.
And watch out for comparisons that give the wrong mental image: The beautiful child was the center of attention, with his golden curls and tuna fish complexion.
3. Clichés. Certain metaphors have simply been done to death and, as a result, have lost their power completely. The trouble is that they’re so much a part of our everyday conversation, they tend to slip through the cracks.
Even though the job paid peanuts, Joe was pleased as punch because he had gone through hell and back, keeping a firm grip on reality the whole time, and was finally seeing his dream come to life.
Metaphors are useful figures of speech—they enliven our speech and our writing, bringing more depth and complexity to the table. If you master the art of metaphors, you can consider yourself a genius. Aristotle says so in Poetics: It is “a sign of genius, as a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity of dissimilars.” We’re looking forward to making a list with your examples of bad metaphors.
Writer’s Relief is an author’s submission service (we help writers submit their books, novels, stories, essays, and poems for publication). For more information, visit http://www.WritersRelief.com.
Take that ball and roll with it!
Let me run this around you.
We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
It’s a tough road to hoe.
Take that to the bank and smoke it!
Gunfire erupted more suddenly than a bag of Jiffy Pop at a wiener roast in Hell.
He stared,with hatred, cold and deadly, like a bat from hell.
He sat down heavily, like a Mack truck dumping a load.
Her dress fit her body, like a yellow line curving around a mountain highway.
Well, that was fun!
Pat Harrington
Her eyes flashed with all the excitement of a pig sneaking into a fat farm.
"So I just laid all my eggs on the table…"
She felt her maternal instincts rise up like a two-headed shark facing down a runaway grocery cart.
His temper brewed like a hot cup of coffee.
She was an enchantress with more curves than a roller coaster who wore a leopard-skin mini-skirt that stuck to her voluptuous body like shrink-wrap to a rump roast.
Cottonwood blossoms hazed the air and littered the ground like dead fleas.
Her singing voice was bluer than the toes of a barefoot field goal kicker.
There were so many piercings in his face it looked like he’d been in an argument with a nail gun–and lost.
Her two front teeth looked like a couple of Chiclets that weren’t on speaking terms.
His touch was as delicate as that of a welding robot.
Her laugh was almost as soft as his lips were chapped.
She enjoyed eating crow as much as he enjoyed shooting it.
His writing was like nineteenth
century poetry-in-motion
As if in a mule-drawn carriage!
His kiss burned her lips like a painful bowel movement
following a hot night in Tijuana.
6/19/09
He was a super man, soaring powerfully through life, anchored firmly by his umbilical cord.
His phiosophy for life was to roll with the punches, resisting every wave of adversity the world would throw at him.
Even with a broken wing, flight can take place with a bit of light.
His teeth looked like an unpainted picket fence with some of the boards rotting…
The dog growled eerily in tune with his empty stomach.
The moon sat in the sky like a huge throbbing whitehead on an Ethiope’s cheek, ripe with pus, juat waiting for two gaint fingernails to come along and pop it.
His words pierced her heart like gale-force wind-driven trash through the walls of a circus tent.
The new baby’s hair stuck out like tiny daggers trapped in a frightened bathing cap.
Her dress left little room for imagination — or lunch.
He was such a slow reader, he had to buy extra ChapStick to get through a Russian novel.
A full moon, as heavy as an udder in need of milking, grazed the tops of the trees.
Tropical warmth engulfed the honeymooners like the hot, humid breath of a preacher.
The two pups bolted at high speed, like shoppers at a blue-light special.
She was torn as she stood between the two. One strong, supportive and caring; the other sweet and seductive. Her resolve melted as she ran towards the Hot light at Krispy Kreme, leaving Weight Watchers behind forever.
Some people are built like Yorkshire terriers. Tiny, small-boned and petite. She was more of a Bichon. Short, stocky and low to the ground with a little fuzz on top.
Love is like a roller coaster. There are ups, downs, and sometimes it just makes you sick!
They cry, they whine, they need fed, coaxed and coddled. Men!
He grabbed her and said, "Look me in the eye and tell me you love me!" As she had crossed eyes, he didn’t know what to believe.
If life is like a box of chocolates, then why am I always getting the pits?
You’re pretty good. You should write jokes for stand-up comics!
Her long locks of rich freshly brewed coffee poured over her shoulders and her robin egg eyes were hatching a plan.
THIS IS ASTONISHING!
He sucked down the beer like a Wet-Vac in a puddle of dirty water.
The night smacked him in the face like the nose of a playful black lab.
She shone as brightly as a mis-aimed headlight in the side view mirror of a Hyundai.
He showed off his yellowed teeth as though the bits of meat stuck between them were a gourmet meal on a porcelain dish set for a king.
Her best writng was as tasteless and awkward as entries in the funny metaphor and simile contest.
With a smile as bright as a ray of sun, the little girl ran as fast as a black stallion chasing a butterfly.
One day we all fade away like a turd in the rain
You wrote this 14 years ago. How did I stumble across this article? Who knows. All I know is this is the most accurate description of life I have ever heard, and so here I am 14 years later liking your comment.
Her stomach rolled like an angry sea at chow time!
Milk it to the hilt!
MacTodd’s face looked like a Pekingese trying to understand French.
Each was wrapped in some sort of weatherproof-looking garment that covered the wearer head to toe in what looked like frog skin. It was the gray-green of mold, as though on their part of the ship had been in a constant squall since setting sail and had not dried out, and as a result they’d gone bad.
In deed the old lady was so stolid that Aster would have put it at even money that she had any internal organs whatsoever, let alone that any of them might have been a tender heart.
She was the sort of girl who would make not just a wonderful wife, but a more than passable upstairs maid.
She was fully prepared to suffer in silence, but when he made the crack that she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, she decided to go for broke. “Another crack about my weight! Of course. With you, everything is vanity!†she sang in a sweet buzz-saw voice, “But you’ve lost your marbles. It’s just the pot calling the kettle black!†She was truly on a rampage, her mind a hive of industry, as if a hundred bulls had been let loose in the china shop.
Oh yeah, he was toast – with the jam fallen face-down on the floor.
Her relationship with him as as spoiled as unpasteurized milk left outside in St Louis on a Tuesday in July, and she drank that vile swill with gusto.
I know somebody like that!
"Let’s roll the dice and order in," she proclaimed, a woman used to living life on the installment plan. At the counter, the words poo-poo platter rolled off her tongue like she had an inside track on takeout, her insouciance reminding me of nothing so much as the smile on a buck naked Wishnik.
She was sweating like a whore in church.
Thanks for sharing this information. This is really cool post.
ed hardy kleidung
She was so skinny she had to jump around in the shower to get wet.
As a scientist, Throckmorton was fully aware that, should he ever break wind in the Echo Chamber, he would never hear the end of it.
(Couldn’t resist)
Her mind swept rapidly through various thoughts as though she had ADHD. She changed her opinions and her mood as though she were Bipolar. She hid behind the two dangly earbuds as though she were Depressed.
The specialists looking at the case file were about to declare her mentally unfit like a very slight version of Einstein, when they finally looked at her age. She was 15, a freshman in highschool, taking the proffered college classes to save money for when she actually had to pay for the credits.
His mind was like a slice of swiss cheese. Some of the powder information stayed on, other parts fell through the holes.
Her mind was like a cut piece, not a slice, of swiss cheese. She caught and stored so much liquid information in the holes, but after that, it just ran off.
She was so tired as she hit the hay, that she didn’t find the needle until she woke up with and found it embedded in her side.
He looked up to her as though she was the moon, the stars, and the sun. And it was warrnted, too, as ‘she’ was just a word to describe something that isn’t really a person or animal, like a truck, or a boat, or the sky.
Her diction does not include the word diction, or the word varied, or the word vocabulary, or the word narrow, or many other words. Therefore I must say that Her words are like, whatever, and stink.
(In reference to the veteran who had been one of the soldiers testing the nuclear bombs) His left hand was as swollen as his nonexistant legs were before the one burst open and before they cut the other one off.
The eighth Harry Potter movie was like the seventh Harry Potter movie, but progressed a bit, and for once in movie history requiring undeniably that you watch the previous movie first, rather than explaining everything again in the fashion of series-type movies.
Good night, all. Hope you’ve had fun reading all these really great posts.
only shades of red make up my life
As much down as a kid whose toys had fallen into a gully hole.
“Busier than a Baghdad brickie ! “
The duck stood on the kerb waiting impatiently for a gap in the traffic when a passing chicken stopped to offer advice “I wouldn’t bother” said the chicken, “you will never hear the end of it !”
I am a walrus.
It was like Schrodinger’s cat, or was it?
Sally and Jones had never met, like two humming birds who had also, never met.
he got more problems than a math book.
He could barely squeeze through the opening. I was akin to a poodle passing a Pepsi can.
The kid was so hungry, his stomach purred like a dog with rabies…
Like a fruit fly stuck in honey he rolled out of bed.
Boy, you are as sharp as a bowling ball.
He was as tall as a 6’3″ tree. Jon and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. The lamp just sat there like an inanimate object.
He was as crestfallen as a crested egret whose crest had fallen off.
I was busier than a one-legged man in an butt-kicking contest.
His eyes were the window to the soul
Useful as a screen door on a submmarine.
Talking to him was as frustrating as eating a hamburger with freshly painted nails.
She has more excuses than a pregnant nun.
She was so far behind, she thought she was first.
He ran as fast as Usain Bolt on steroids being chased by a hungry lion.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Busy as a cat trying to cover poop on a tin roof.
She thought she had gained weight as in the shower it now took her 30 mins to get her feet wet.
Busier than a one armed clown making balloon animals at a kids party.
Happier than a blind dog in a meat house.
Tougher than titties on a turtle
He was so fat he had a circumference of 2 πr.
He was such a slow talker he had to go on a dentist’s appointment before he could finish saying his name.
He oversimplified his idea so much it beat the oversimplification it took to get from a real truck to Elon’s Tesla Cyber Truck.
Grandpa’s mind had always been like a steel trap, even in his later years, but it had been out so long it had rusted shut.
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
If I had two tails I’d wag them both because this cheered me up like a kid in an ice cream freezer and boosted my shares in kleenex
After the car hit it, the deer’s intestines accordianed across the road like so many wet socks in a dryer but not dry yet.
The rain hit her in the face, not unlike having a drink thrown in her face, except for the ice cubes.
His eyes were big and round like the moon, but smaller because the moon is actually big but far away.
She’d clearly had work done. Her lips looked like they could do with more real estate than her face was able to provide, and her breasts were firmer than the handshake of a Texan farmer meeting his son’s gay lover for the first time.
YES
😆