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

J. H. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms

All talking and no listening, after the manner of a Woman’s Rights Convention.

Big as all out of doors.

Busy as a hen with fifteen chickens in a barnyard.

Cold as the north side of a January gravestone by moonlight.

Crazy as a bedbug.

Fierce as a ramcat.

Foul as Zebedee’s hen that laid three rotten eggs to a good one.

Fresh as butter just from the churn.

Good as wheat.

Handy as a pocket in a shirt.

Happy as a clam at high water.

Hot as the devil’s kitchen.

Hungry as a graven image.

Important as a militia officer on a training day.

Long as a Thanksgiving sermon.

Long-winded as a tornado.

Mad as all wrath.

Mad as a bull among bumble bees.

Melancholy as a Quaker meeting-house by moonlight.

Natural as grinning to a hyena.

Quick as greased lightning.

Rough as the back of a hedgehog.

Scarce as hens’ teeth.

Shake him up like a shirt in a hurricane.

Sharp as the little end of nothing.

Sick as a horse.

Silently as a snail slips over a cabbage leaf on a dewy morning.

Slick as greased lightning.

Slick as sin.

Slick as a whistle.

Slick as grease.

Smiling as a basket of chips.

Stick like a Comanche on a mustang. The worse it jumps, the tighter he sticks.

Straight as a loon’s leg.

Straight as a shingle.

Sure as a gun.

Tough as old hickory.

Useless as whistling psalms to a dead horse.

Full of wit as a ginger-bottle is of pop.

Wrathy as a militia officer on a training day.