Comparisons as Predictable as the Sunrise
The article analyzes 200,000 “as ___ as ___” similes extracted from popular fiction, revealing patterns in how adjectives pair with nouns across literature. It finds that many adjectives have distinctive “fingerprints,” often dominated by cliché comparisons, while certain nouns serve as specialists (tightly linked to one adjective, e.g., “cucumber” for “cool”) or generalists (used with many adjectives, e.g., “hell”). The study also discusses ironic similes that subvert expected qualities for humor, highlighting the complex and predictable nature of figurative language in fiction.
