Reading time: Just over 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a series of similes and metaphors by Rebecca Mead….
A writer for the New Yorker, Rebecca Mead joined the magazine as a staffer in 1997 and has written about many high-profile subjects, including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Margaret Atwood.
Her most recent piece, under the headline, “Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Fractured Fairy Tale once again displays her keen eye and ear for figurative language, which I have highlighted before.
Here are my favourite examples from the most recent piece:
- Hussein snapped a picture the split second that the couple, their arms linked under a single umbrella, turned toward each other and smiled. The image became instantly iconic. The pair gazed into each other’s eyes with the insular complicity of newlyweds, unscathed by the rain falling around them like glittering confetti.
- In the three months since the Sussexes announced their intention to step down—reportedly, before consulting the Queen, Prince Charles, or Prince William—the British people, or at least their representatives in the media, have been reeling like a spouse blindsided by a partner’s sudden announcement of irreconcilable differences.
- And last year, when the Queen’s youngest son, Edward, the Earl of Wessex, turned fifty-five, his mother gave him an additional title: the Earl of Forfar, named for a Lowland town north of the Scottish port of Dundee. The title is for the Earl’s use while in Scotland—the honorific equivalent of a sturdy, plaid-lined mackintosh.
- Walt Disney himself could not have dreamed them [Harry and Meghan] up.
- Prince Harry is about as likely to start inviting editors to lunch as he is to embark upon a Ph.D. in astrophysics.
- Judging by Harry’s recent remarks, it appears that, in the years since his mother’s death, Markle was the only person close to him who persuaded him to exchange a stiff upper lip for a trembling lower one.
