When we describe someone as smart as a whip, we are likely to make them feel pleased as punch. But what is so smart about a whip, and why should punch be pleased?
Delving into the history of smart, we find that the word first meant “experiencing sharp pain.” Gradually the adjective took on additional meanings, including “quick, active, and prompt,” as in “look smart!” and, by extension, “clever, intelligent.” Smart as a whip unites the older and newer meanings.
The punch that is so pleased in the cliché is not the stuff we drink, but the Punch of the Punch and Judy shows, created in the early 17th century. While most people believe that pleased as Punch is a food metaphor (and hence neglect to capitalize the P), the phrase in fact alludes to the cheerful singing and self-satisfaction of the extroverted puppet.
In the phrase dead as a doornail, what’s so dead about a doornail? To find out, we must look back through the centuries to the craft of carpentry. Long-ago carpenters drove bigheaded metal nails into doors to connect the crosspieces on the back. The carpenters would hook the tip of the nail back to “clinch” the nail (as we clinch a deal). The nail was “dead,” meaning “fixed, rigid, immovable,” as in deadline and deadlock. Carpenters today still use the term “dead-nailing.” It didn’t take long for the pun on “fixed, rigid, immovable” and “not alive” to become clinched in our language, as in Charles Dickens’s opening in A Christmas Carol: “Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”
You’ve probably heard the expression slow as molasses (in January). But molasses isn’t slow. In the Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919, a massive vat of molasses collapsed on a warm day, producing a 25-foot-high wave that swept through neighborhoods at 35 miles per hour. Twenty-five people perished on that bittersweet day.
May you be smart as a whip and pleased as Punch when you review the adjective- as-a noun similes that follow:
Complete the following dozen clichés by using food items:
- American as ___
- brown as ___
- cool as ___
- easy as ___
- flat as ___
- nutty as ___
- red as ___
- soft as ___
- sweet as ___
- thick as ___
- warm as ___
- wrinkled as ___
Answers
- apple pie 2. a berry 3. a cucumber 4. pie 5. a pancake 6. a fruitcake 7. a beet/a lobster 8. butter 9. honey/sugar 10. pea soup 11. toast 12. a prune
Now complete the following clichés that include objects found around the house:
- bald as ___
- big as ___
- black as ___
- comfortable as ___
- clean as ___
- cute as ___
- deaf as ___
- high as ___
- limp as ___
- neat as ___
- pretty as ___
- rough as ___
- sharp as ___
- smooth as ___
- soft as ___
- stiff as ___
- tight as ___
- tough as ___
- thin as ___
- white as ___
Answers
- a billiard ball 2. a house 3. pitch / the ace of spades 4. an old shoe 5. a whistle 6. a button 7. a post 8. a kite 9. a dishrag 10. a pin 11. a picture 12. sandpaper 13. a tack 14. silk 15. velve 16. a board 17. a drum 18. nails / shoe leather 19.a rake / a toothpick 20. a sheet
For a change in approach, fill in the first part of each cliché by inserting the appropriately hackneyed adjective. Examples: green as grass/good as gold/hot as blazes
- ___ as an arrow
- ___ as a bell
- ___ as a bone/dust
- ___ as Croesus
- ___ as day
- ___ as the day is long
- ___ as the day you were born
- ___ as a dollar
- ___ as a fiddle
- ___ as a flash/a wink
- ___ as a hatter
- ___ as a judge
- ___ as life
- ___ as a lord
- ___ as Methuselah/the hills/time
- ___ as a new-born babe
- ___ as night and day
- ___ as the nose on your face
- ___ as a rail
- ___ as shootin’
- ___ as sin
- ___ as thieves
- ___ as a three-dollar bill
- ___ as a tomb
Answers
- straight 2. clear 3. dry 4. rich 5. clear / plain 6. honest 7. naked 8. sound 9. fit 10. quick 11. mad 12. sober 13. big 14. drunk 15. old 16. innocent 17. different 18. plain 19. thin 20. sure 21. ugly 22. thick 23. phony 24. silent