bigness

See Also: FATNESS, PHYSICAL APPEARANCE, TALLNESS

1. Ample as a fat man’s waistline —Anon
2. As large as life —Maria Edgeworth
3. As large as life and twice as natural —Anon

   While this is most commonly attributed to Lewis Carroll, who used it in Through the Looking Glass in 1873, Stevenson’s Proverbs, Maxims and Famous Phrases includes an earlier (though likely not the earliest) source, Cuthbert Bede’s 1853 work, Verdant Green.

4. Big as a braggart’s mouth —Anon
5. Big as a den bear —Richard Ford
6. Big as a draft animal —William Brammer
7. Big as all out of doors —Anon
8. [A man] big as an express train —T. Coraghessan Boyle
9. (Bombers) big as bowling alleys —Marge Piercy
10. A big man, filling the chair like a great mound of wheat —H.R.F. Keating
11. Great as man’s ambition —Dame Edith Sitwell
12. Huge as a planet —Lord Byron
13. Huge as mountains —Walter Savage Landor
14. Immense as whales —Sir William Davenant
15. Large as a log of maple —Refrain from “Yankee Doodle,” early American folk song
16. (My disappointment) large as capsized tugs —Richard Eberhart
17. A large business organization is like a damn big dragon. You kick it in the tail, and two years later, it feels it in the head —Frederick Kappell, Look, August 28, 1962

    Kappell, chairman of American Telephone and Telegraph, began his comparison with “The Bell System is …” instead of the more general phrase used here.

    See Also: BUSINESS

18. A list big as a comedian’s gag file —Anon
19. Over-sized like a clown’s shoes —Anon
20. She’s big as a damned barn and tough as knife metal —Ken Kesey

    See Also: TOUGHNESS

21. She was big as three women —Ernest Hemingway
22. Vast as water —Madeleine L’Engle
23. Vast like the inside of a Pharaoh’s tomb —Arthur A. Cohen

    In Cohen’s novel, In the Days of Simon Stern, the comparison describes New York’s Madison Square Garden.