See Also: ENTRANCES/EXITS, SHOCK, SURPRISE

1. Abrupt as a sultry little thunder shower —Amy Leslie
2. Abruptly as string that snaps beneath the bow —Ernest William Hornung
3. Abruptly, like a summer rainstorm —Derek Lambert
4. Abrupt, startling shock, like the slap of a wet towel —Norman Mailer
5. All at once, like the wind dispersing storm clouds at a single puff —Lawrence Durrell
6. Appear suddenly as if out of a fold of the air —Iris Murdoch
7. Arbitrary as a cyclone —Anon
8. Burst into the room like a bullet crashing through a window —Guy De Maupassant

   See Also: BURST

9. Didn’t expect it … like a storm on a very fine day —Ivan Turgenev
10. He was with them as suddenly as a gift, as if an arm had thrust in a bunch of roses or a telegram —Eudora Welty
11. (A reflex as) immediate as a sneeze —Leigh Allison Wilson

    A common variation: “Sudden as a sneeze.”

12. Steep as a broom handle —Elizabeth Spencer
13. Steep as hell’s half acre —George MacDonald Fraser
14. Stopped all of a sudden, as if he had been shot —William Makepeace Thackeray
15. Sudden and foolish as that almost silent fart —George Garrett

    See Also: FOOLISHNESS

16. Sudden as a burst of hiccuping —Anon

    This and the entries that follow typify the simile that develops new twists from conversation to conversation, writer to writer.

17. Sudden as a dislocated joint slipping back into place —Anon
18. Sudden as a massacre —Anon
19. Sudden as a meteor shooting across the sky —Anon
20. Sudden as an epileptic seizure —Anon
21. Sudden as a stitch in your side —Anon
22. Sudden as a summer shower —Anon
23. Sudden as a tornado swooping down on a small town —Alistair Cooke, Public Television, March 8, 1987

    The comparison referring to the suddenness of the first World War was made during an introduction to an episode in the “Lost Empire” series.

24. [Call of a jaybird] sudden as conscience —Robert Penn Warren
25. Sudden as the stopping of breath —Mary Lee Settle
26. (The end was) sudden, like a foolish play —Karl Shapiro
27. Suddenly, as a train comes out of a tunnel —Virginia Woolf
28. Suddenly, like a pair of obscene words, (there appeared on the path two boys) —Truman Capote
29. Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in the barometer, indicate little else than the changeableness of the weather —Julius Charles Hare and Augustus William Hare
30. Sudden, surprising … it is like encountering a pun in a telephone directory —Karl E. Meyer
31. Too sudden … like the lightning —William Shakespeare