Quote Originally Posted by flyguy66 View Post
The linguist in me is wont to point out that three of them were, in fact, metaphors - not similes. But who cares.
Only one. ("The young fighter ...")

The other two you're talking about use the words "resembled" or "exactly the way", which still count as simile; i.e. an explicit comparison. Your seventh grade English teacher may have actually said you need to use the words "like" or "as", but there are plenty of synonyms. My dictionary has the correct English teacher definition of simile : "... expressing likeness by the use of such terms as like, as, so, etc". Most people forget the "such terms as" part and remember only the "like" and "as" part.

My doctoral dissertation in computational linguistics was about metphor; I know somewhat what I'm talking about. (Unfortunately, I never finished it because I found out I could make a lot more money practicing NLP than writing about it -- which is probably why I'm sensitive to the subject. I sold my soul.)