Voice, Harsh

See Also: HARSHNESS

1. A hard, crushing voice like stones smashing against each other —Aharon Megged
2. Her voice … creaked like the hinges of a rusty iron gate —Stefan Zweig
3. Her voice flew around like pots and pans —Leonard Michaels
4. Her voice sounded as brittle and sharp as a broken sliver of glass —Graham Masterton
5. High, irritating voice, like a razor blade —Caryl Phillips
6. His voice was harsh, like a great whirring mill saw —T. Coraghessan Boyle
7. Hoarse bass voice like an echo in an empty house —Amos Oz
8. A hoarse voice … like something broken —Romain Gary
9. A retching voice like a tin shovel scooping water off a concrete barn floor —Leonard Casper
10. A roughness in her voice like a grasshopper’s —Virginia Woolf
11. [Voice] sounded like two shards of pottery being rubbed together —Norman Mailer
12. Their voices slash like reeds —William Meredith
13. A thick, husky voice that sounded as if he’d swallowed too many years of fog —Margaret Millar
14. A voice as hard as the blade of a shovel —Raymond Chandler
15. Voice … brittle as the first ice of autumn —Michael Gilbert
16. Voice … brittle, like overdone candy cracking on a plate —Pat M. Esslinger-Carr
17. Voice cracking like a trunk lid unopened for years —Patricia Henley
18. Voice … croaky and tense and faintly honking, as if a metal tube were involved in its production —John Updike
19. Voice, cruel as a new knife —George Garrett
20. Voice … deep, like crusted port wine —Donald Seaman
21. Voice flat and hard as a stove lid —James Crumley
22. Voice … fringed and sharp like the edge of a saw —Carson McCullers
23. Voice … hard as a nail on glass —William Beechcroft
24. Voice harsh and light as the scratching of dry leaves over the hard ground —Edna St. Vincent Millay
25. Voice harsh like tin and without heat like tin —William Faulkner
26. Voice … hoarse as a rooster —John Farris
27. Voice like a chair scraping across a tiled floor —Roderic Jeffries
28. Voice like a fingernail scraping down a dry blackboard —Reynolds Price

    Modern usage favors ‘chalkboard.’

29. Voice … like a foghorn in foul weather —George Garrett
30. A voice like a howitzer —Thomas Carlyle about his publisher Frederic Henry Hedge
31. Voice … like a pointer moving sharply on a map or blackboard —Mary McCarthy

    McCarthy’s Charmed Life was written in the forties. As indicated in entry #28, the currently preferred word for ‘blackboard’ is ‘chalkboard.’

32. Voice, like a rusty hinge —Margaret Mitchell
33. Voice like a slate-pencil squeak —Paul J. Wellman
34. Voice like a spoon scraping a cooking pot —Annette Sanford
35. Voice like a tight squeak —Anon, about Marilyn Monroe by Columbia Pictures when they fired her in 1948
36. Voice, like barbed wire —Helen Hudson
37. A voice like cracking glaciers —Elinor Wylie
38. A voice like frosted trees in the wind —Rolaine Hochstein
39. A voice like hot ashes —James Agee
40. Voice … like sand —T. Coraghessan Boyle
41. Voice like scruffed gravel —Hortense Calisher
42. Voice like the cracked shriek of a desert wind —Phyllis Bottome
43. Voice … reedy like a tall-legged, tall-necked bird —Carolyn Chute
44. Voice … scratchily metallic as though it were being raked across miles of rusted roofing tin —Sharon Sheehe Stark
45. Voice … sharp as a snowflake on a sunburned nose —Rex Reed, about Tennessee Williams
46. Voice … sharp as porcupine quills —John Updike
47. Voice … sharp, splintering, like dry kindling split by an ax. Voice like pebbles in a bucket —Carlos Baker
48. Voice so ruined it sounded like a wood rasp —John Yount
49. Voice sounded like a crow with a cold —Harold Adams
50. Voice … sounds as if her throat is swollen shut —John Updike
51. Voices shrill as children’s whistles —Marge Piercy
52. Voice that sounded like tires on a wet road —Richard Maynard
53. Voice … with a hardness in it like struck steel —John Yount
54. Voice … with an alluring crack in it, like some magisterial old woman who has smoked all her life —Lynne Sharon Schwartz