Comparisons as Predictable as the Sunrise

Comparisons as Predictable as the Sunrise

May 26, 2026 at 11:29PM

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Remember learning about figures of speech, like similes and metaphors, in your elementary-school English class? In this fun feature, The Pudding analyzed 200,000 similes from popular fiction. As cool as a cucumber. As hot as hell. “Once you start looking, you see them everywhere,” writes Russell Samora, “from the classics like Jane Eyre to last year’s darling Heart the Lover.” It’s impossible not to poke around this interactive piece, with design and illustration by Shelly Tan.

As _____ as Stone

Although stone has one dominant physical quality where it tops seven adjectives (hard/solid/impenetrable, etc.,), where a cat is defined by the range of things it does, stone is often defined by what it lacks.

These four buckets are mostly a bunch of different ways to say “nothing is happening here,” which makes stone a perfectly blank, and oft-used canvas for a simile.

Read the story

from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/05/26/similes/
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