A Lighter View
Similies in time
By K.E.H. Stagg

September 9, 2010

Our language is peppered with similes—“going off like a rocket,” “a night sky like diamonds against black velvet”—that make me wonder what similes were used before the invention of rockets, or the discovery of diamonds and weaving of velvet?

I can just imagine some ancient tribal group, sitting on the hill of the old Coover farm in Dillsburg, commenting, “Wow! Those little white dots sure make the night sky black!” Depending on how ancient the group was, they may not even have known that “those little white dots” were stars!

We speak nowadays of someone having “skin as tough as leather” or “looking like a yard of rough road”. What likenesses were used before the tanning of animal skins or the creation of roads? Did ancient Dillsburg women say of each other, “Her skin looks like tree bark!”?

We even use technologically linked words for colors: “fire-engine red”, “ink black,” or “white as a sheet”. Fire engines haven’t always been red; in the days of horse-drawn engines, they were painted almost exclusively in dark colors . And both sheets and ink are relatively recent in the annals of human history. So how did you describe a brilliant, true red before the application of distinctive paint to fire trucks? Blood—or even red wine—is a more purple hue, and not every country has the bright poppy flower to make that correlation.

Think of common expressions that evolved only after the advent of a particular invention. We talk of riding on “square wheels” to describe a particularly rough travel route, but the ancients would’ve walked barefoot or ridden horseback. Did they complain of treading “sharp” dirt paths, or moan that the horse felt as if it had a pointed spine?

And what was a “hair-trigger temper” or an “explosive” personality likened to before the use of gunpowder and rifles? I can’t imagine that “getting angry in a second” or “liable to chop your head off” would’ve carried the same weight as the expressions we use today. What was someone “as sharp as” in the centuries preceding creation of knives? Sharp as “a really sharp, pointy stone”? It just doesn’t carry the same impact!

The only simile I can think of that’s been around forever is “nutty as a fruitcake”. After all, there was only one fruitcake ever made, and it’s been making the rounds since the year dot!