Bad analogies

I found a website with a contest (supposedly) for bad analogies. Some research leads me to (strongly) believe that this website got the analogies from a widely circulated email, so I do not feel the need to attribute to them. If there was an original, I don’t know it. I then searched the internet for more bad analogies, and winnowed down the list to these.

If you’re reading these aloud at work, after each sentence everyone should say (in a mock Italian accent), “Now THAT’S a bad analogy.”


Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.

His fountain pen was so expensive it looked as if someone had grabbed the pope, turned him upside down and started writing with the tip of his big pointy hat.


These are the best of the bunch:

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.