On this page14 sections
- Quick picker
- Similes for being dead
- Similes for how death looks
- Similes for silence and stillness
- Similes for dying: how death comes
- Similes for how short life is
- Famous similes about death in literature
- Similes for grief and loss
- Similes for many deaths at once
- Which ones to use when
- Writing a fresh simile about death
- Common mistakes
- Practice
- Quick answers
The best-known similes for death are as dead as a doornail, as pale as death, as still as death, as quiet as the grave, like a candle snuffed out, like falling asleep and like a thief in the night. Each one compares death, or something touched by it, to a familiar thing using like or as: the everyday ones are casual (a dead battery is “as dead as a doornail”), while the gentle and literary ones suit a poem, a eulogy or serious fiction.
Before you choose, decide what you are describing, because a simile for being dead, one for the moment of dying and one for grief are different tools. The groups below follow that order, each simile with a sentence in use, a note on tone, and its source where it has one. After them come famous similes about death from Shakespeare, the Bible and poets such as Wilfred Owen, a table of which ones to use when, and the mistakes people make most. Comparisons without like or as (“death is a long sleep”) are on metaphors for death; fixed phrases such as “kick the bucket” are on idioms for death.
Quick picker
| You want to say | Simile | Tone |
|---|---|---|
| completely dead (or not working at all) | as dead as a doornail | casual, a little jokey |
| gone for good, out of date | as dead as a dodo | casual |
| someone looks very pale, ill or shocked | as pale as death; as white as a sheet; like death warmed up | neutral to casual |
| a place is utterly silent | as quiet as the grave; as still as death | neutral, slightly literary |
| death came quickly and gently | like a candle snuffed out; like falling asleep | serious, gentle |
| death came without warning | like a thief in the night | serious, biblical echo |
| a young person died too soon | like an untimely frost on a flower | literary (Shakespeare) |
| life is short | like grass; like a shadow; like a tale that is told | serious, often religious |
| many people dying (or falling ill) at once | dropping like flies | casual, can sound callous |
| what grief feels like | like losing a limb; like waves | serious, personal |
Similes for being dead
These are the everyday ones. They are old and well known, which is exactly why they sound casual: use them about things, plans or fictional characters, not about someone a reader has just lost.
- As dead as a doornail. Completely dead. It is centuries old: it appears in the fourteenth-century poem Piers Plowman, and Dickens opens A Christmas Carol with “Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail” before joking that a coffin-nail would make more sense. Today it is used just as often for objects: “The car battery is as dead as a doornail.”
- As dead as a dodo. The dodo died out in the seventeenth century, so this means extinct, finished or out of fashion: “Fax machines in our office are as dead as a dodo.” Rarely used about a person.
- As dead as mutton. British and dated; you will meet it in older novels more than in conversation.
- As dead as a stone / stone dead. Plainer and less jokey than the doornail: “The bird lay as dead as a stone on the path.”
- Like a puppet with its strings cut. For a body that drops suddenly and loosely. Common in fiction and crime writing: “He fell like a puppet with its strings cut.”
- Sleep like the dead. Not about death at all: it means to sleep very deeply. “After the night shift I slept like the dead.”
Similes for how death looks
Many of these describe the living, not the dead: someone who has had a shock or is very ill. That is their most common use today.
- As pale as death / deathly pale. “She came out of the meeting as pale as death.” The simile is about colour, not about dying.
- As white as a sheet / as white as a ghost. Pale with fear or shock: “He went as white as a sheet when he saw the bill.”
- Look (or feel) like death / like death warmed up. Look or feel terrible, usually from illness or a hangover. Like death warmed up is British; Americans say like death warmed over. “You look like death warmed up. Go home.” Informal, and kind only between friends.
- As still as death. Not a sound or a movement: “The house was as still as death when we got back.” Also used of a person lying motionless.
- As cold as the grave / as cold as a tomb. For a cold place or a cold manner: “The church was as cold as a tomb in January.”
- Like a waxwork. For a face that looks unreal and unmoving, often of a body at a viewing. Careful: it can sound harsh to a family.
Similes for silence and stillness
- As quiet as the grave / as silent as the grave. Total silence, and also a person who will keep a secret: “Don’t worry, I’ll be as silent as the grave.”
- As quiet as a tomb. Usually a building: “The library was as quiet as a tomb.”
- Like a house after a funeral. A heavy, awkward quiet. This one is a writer’s image rather than a fixed phrase: “The office felt like a house after a funeral when the layoffs were announced.”
Similes for dying: how death comes
These describe the moment or manner of dying, and they are the ones writers reach for in poems, obituaries and serious fiction. Choose by the kind of death you mean: peaceful, sudden, too early, or knowingly faced.
A peaceful death
- Like falling asleep. A gentle, peaceful death. The link between sleep and death is very old: in Homer’s Iliad, Sleep and Death are twin brothers. “The nurse said it would be like falling asleep.” Comforting, and widely used in hospice and family talk.
- Like a candle snuffed out / like a light going out. A life ending quickly and quietly: “He went like a candle snuffed out, between one breath and the next.” Do not confuse it with out like a light, which means falling asleep instantly.
- Like a leaf falling. A natural, gentle end, often for old age: “Her death was like a leaf letting go in autumn.”
A sudden death
- Like a thief in the night. Without warning. The phrase comes from the New Testament (1 Thessalonians 5:2), where it describes the Day of the Lord, and has long been applied to death: “Illness came for him like a thief in the night.”
- Like a bolt from the blue. The news of a death that nobody expected: “Her death came like a bolt from the blue.” It describes the shock, not the dying itself.
A death that comes too early
- Like an untimely frost. Death taking someone young. In Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet is believed dead, her father says death lies on her “like an untimely frost / Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”
- Like a flower cut down. The same idea in plainer form, close to Job 14:2: “He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down.”
Going towards death without knowing it
- Like a lamb to the slaughter. Going towards harm or death innocently or without resistance, from Isaiah 53:7. Today it is mostly used loosely about walking into trouble: “The new manager went into that meeting like a lamb to the slaughter.”
- Like a moth to a flame. Drawn irresistibly towards something that will destroy you. More often about love or danger than literal death.
Similes for how short life is
The oldest group, mostly from scripture and poetry. They suit a eulogy, a sermon or a reflective essay. The quotations below are from the King James Bible.
- Like grass. Psalm 103: “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.” Life grows, blooms and fades.
- Like a shadow. Psalm 144: “his days are as a shadow that passeth away.” Job 14:2 adds that man “fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.”
- Like a tale that is told. Psalm 90: “we spend our years as a tale that is told.” Life as a story that is over once it has been heard.
- Like a vapour / like a mist. A common modern simile. Its source, the Letter of James (4:14), is actually a metaphor: “It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” Saying “life is like a vapour” turns it into a simile.
- Like a dream. “Looking back, ninety years went by like a dream.”
- Like a brief candle. From Macbeth’s “Out, out, brief candle!” Strictly a metaphor in the play, but “life is like a brief candle” is a common simile built on it.
Famous similes about death in literature
These are real lines from well-known writers, useful for an essay, a reading at a funeral, or simply seeing how good writers handle the subject.
- Francis Bacon, “Of Death” (1625): “Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark.” The essay opens with this simile and goes on to argue that the fear grows from imagination as much as from death itself.
- Shakespeare, Measure for Measure: Claudio, facing execution, says that if he must die he will “encounter darkness as a bride, / And hug it in mine arms.” Death met as a lover, half brave and half desperate.
- Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra: Antony resolves to “run into’t as to a lover’s bed.” The same image of death as an embrace, used by a defeated soldier.
- Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: the “untimely frost” simile above, for a young life ended.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life” (1838): our hearts, “like muffled drums, are beating / Funeral marches to the grave.” Every heartbeat as a step towards death.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais (1821): “Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, / Stains the white radiance of Eternity, / Until Death tramples it to fragments.” Written in grief for Keats.
- Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” (written 1917): opens by asking what bells there are “for these who die as cattle”, a simile of anger at mass death in the trenches.
- Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”: a gassed soldier is seen “flound’ring like a man in fire or lime”, one of the most painful similes of dying in English poetry.
Notice what these share: each simile is tied to a person and a situation. None of them is a general statement that death is “like” something; that is what makes them land.
Similes for grief and loss
Grief similes describe the person left behind, not the one who died. That makes them the right choice for a sympathy message, a memoir or a character’s inner life. Plain, physical comparisons tend to ring truest.
- Like losing a limb. A part of you is gone and you keep reaching for it: “Losing my brother was like losing an arm.”
- Like waves. Grief that comes and goes, calm and then sudden: “It comes in waves, like the sea, and some days it knocks me over.”
- Like the floor dropping away. The first shock of the news: “When the phone rang, it was like the floor dropped out from under me.”
- Like a weight on the chest. The physical heaviness of sorrow: “For weeks it felt like a weight on my chest.”
- Like living in a fog. The numb weeks after a death, when nothing feels real.
- Like an empty chair at the table. Absence felt in daily routine: “Christmas felt like an empty chair at the table, every minute of it.”
- Like fear. C. S. Lewis begins A Grief Observed (1961), written after his wife’s death, by saying that no one told him “grief felt so like fear.” Many grieving readers have found that comparison truer than any image of tears.
For sadness more broadly, see similes for sad and metaphors for grief.
Similes for many deaths at once
- Dropping like flies. Many people dying or, more often today, falling ill or dropping out: “Half the office is off; people are dropping like flies with this flu.” In a report on a real tragedy it sounds callous.
- Like lambs to the slaughter (plural). Soldiers or victims sent to die in great numbers, often with anger at whoever sent them.
- Like wheat before the scythe. An old, literary image of people cut down in war or plague. Owen’s “die as cattle” belongs to the same family.
Which ones to use when
| Situation | Fits | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Sympathy card or message to the family | Usually no simile about death at all; if you want an image, a grief one such as “like an empty chair at the table” | dead as a doornail, dropping like flies, white as a sheet, like death warmed up |
| Eulogy | like grass, like a tale that is told, like a leaf falling, a personal simile about the person’s life | anything jokey unless the family asked for humour |
| Poem or story | like an untimely frost, like a thief in the night, fresh images of your own | stacking three similes in one line |
| Essay on a literary text | quote the writer’s own simile and say what it does | paraphrasing a famous line so it becomes a cliché |
| Everyday talk about things | dead as a doornail, dead as a dodo | the scriptural ones, which sound heavy |
| Describing a shocked or ill person | as pale as death, as white as a sheet | similes that imply the person is dying when they are not |
One more rule of tone: a simile about the dead person (“she went like a candle snuffed out”) is something the family may say; a stranger saying it can sound presumptuous. Similes about your own grief are always yours to use.
Writing a fresh simile about death
Stock similes are safe but flat. To write your own, start from something specific to the person or the place, not from death in general:
- Pick one concrete detail: a habit, a tool, a room, a season.
- Ask what about the death or the loss resembles it: suddenness, quiet, an absence, a pattern broken.
- Write it plainly, with one like or as, and stop.
For example (these are made-up illustrations, not quotations): for a gardener, “the house was as quiet as her greenhouse in winter”; for a talkative grandfather, “the kitchen was like a radio switched off mid-sentence.” Both work because they come from the life, not from a list.
Common mistakes
- Using “out like a light” for death. It means fell asleep at once: “The baby was out like a light by seven.” For death, say “like a light going out”.
- Calling a metaphor a simile. “Death is a long sleep” and “Death is the final chapter” are metaphors: there is no like or as. “Death is like a long sleep” is the simile.
- Calling personification a simile. “He laughed in the face of death” gives death a face; it is personification inside an idiom, not a simile. Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me” is personification too.
- Treating euphemisms as similes. “Passed away”, “lost” and “at rest” soften the fact but compare nothing, so they are euphemisms, not similes.
- A casual simile in a serious place. “Grandad was as dead as a doornail” in a condolence message is a real error of tone, even though the simile is correct.
- Confusing “dead as a dodo” with “dead as a doornail”. A dodo is extinct or obsolete; a doornail is simply dead. “Our landline is as dead as a dodo” means nobody uses it; “as dead as a doornail” means it does not work.
- “Like a cat with nine lives” for someone who died. It describes someone who keeps surviving. Using it after a death says the opposite of what you mean, unless you are noting how many close calls the person survived first.
Practice
A. Choose the best simile.
- The battery has gone completely flat. It’s ______. (as dead as a doornail / like a thief in the night)
- The heart attack came with no warning at all, ______. (like a thief in the night / as dead as a dodo)
- After the accident he sat in the waiting room ______. (as white as a sheet / like a candle snuffed out)
- Nobody says “groovy” any more; the word is ______. (as dead as a dodo / as quiet as the grave)
- “Don’t worry, your secret is safe. I’ll be ______.” (as silent as the grave / dropping like flies)
- Three weeks of flu and you still ______. Go back to bed. (look like death warmed up / sleep like the dead)
B. Simile, metaphor, personification or euphemism?
- She passed away peacefully on Sunday.
- Life is like a brief candle.
- Death is the great leveller.
- He laughed in the face of death.
- Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark.
C. Fix the tone. Rewrite for a sympathy card: “I was sorry to hear your mum is as dead as a doornail.”
Answers
1 as dead as a doornail · 2 like a thief in the night · 3 as white as a sheet · 4 as dead as a dodo · 5 as silent as the grave · 6 look like death warmed up · 7 euphemism · 8 simile · 9 metaphor · 10 personification (in an idiom) · 11 simile (Bacon) · C, one possibility: “I was so sorry to hear about your mum. I’m thinking of you.”
Quick answers
What is the most common simile for death?
“As dead as a doornail”, followed by “as pale as death” and “as quiet as the grave”.
Why a doornail?
Nobody knows for certain. One common explanation is that a nail hammered through a door and bent over on the inside could never be pulled out or used again, so it was “dead”. The phrase was already old when Dickens joked about it.
What is a simile for dying peacefully?
“Like falling asleep”, “like a candle snuffed out” or “like a leaf falling”. All three are gentle enough for family use.
What is a famous simile about death?
Francis Bacon’s “Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark” is probably the most quoted. Shakespeare’s “like an untimely frost” and Owen’s “these who die as cattle” are close behind.
Is “death is like sleep” a simile?
Yes, because of like. “Death is sleep” would be a metaphor.
Is “he laughed in the face of death” a metaphor?
Not quite. It is an idiom meaning he faced great danger without fear, and it works by personification: death is given a face. It contains no like or as, so it is not a simile either.
Can I use similes in a eulogy?
Yes, sparingly. One plain image about the person (“she was like the hub of a wheel; everything turned around her”) usually works better than several about death itself.
New to the terms? Start with figurative language, which explains similes, metaphors and idioms side by side.