ENG 100TROPES EXAMPLES/EXERCISE
- Time is a thief.
- She is a rollercoaster of emotions.
- They fought like cats and dogs.
- I’m tired of working like a dog, since clearly no one cares about what I do.
- The world treated him badly.
- "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" - Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar
- The House was called to order.
- Red letter day
- "And there's bars on the corners and bars on the heart."
(Tim McGraw, "Where The Green Grass Grows") - If you don’t look good, we don’t look good."
(Vidal Sassoon advertising slogan) - I used to be a tap dancer until I fell in the sink.
- At a hearing aid center: "Let us give you some sound advice."
- "When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes."
(E.B. White, "Dog Training") - "She blew my nose and then she blew my mind."
(Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Honky Tonk Woman") - "In the New York Herald Tribune a beaver was almost incognito as 'the furry, paddle-tailed mammal.'
- "In the Lincoln [Neb.] Sunday Journal-Star a cow did not give milk; 'the vitamin-laden liquid' came from a 'bovine milk factory.' . . .
- Don’t worry. I’m mapping our progress.
- Oh no, she will architect her own room.
- The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky.
- The run down house appeared depressed.
- That joke is so old, the last time I heard it I was riding on a dinosaur.
- If he talks to me in front of everyone, I will die of embarrassment.
- "Oh, you think you're so special because you get to play Picture Pages up there? Well, my five year old daughter could do that and let me tell you, she's not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed."
(Allison Janney as Bren in Juno, 2007) - "We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all."
(Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 20, 1989) - "Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?"
(H. L. Mencken) - "The means are at hand to fulfill the age-old dream: poverty can be abolished. How long shall we ignore this under-developed nation in our midst? How long shall we look the other way while our fellow human beings suffer? How long"
(Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States, 1962) - "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."
(Peter Sellers as President MerkinMuffley in Dr. Strangelove, 1964) - Knock-knock Who's there?
Boo
Boo who?
Don't cry, I was only joking - "[Aredelia] found Starling in the warm laundry room, dozing against the slow rump-rump of a washing machine."
(Thomas Harris, Silence of the Lambs) - Artificial grass
- Baby grand piano
- I must be cruel to be kind. ~ William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
- You can save money by spending it.
K.M. HedrickENG 100rev. 09/12
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