  The present study is focused on the automatic identification and description
of frozen similes in British and French novels written between the 19 th
century and the beginning of the 20 th century. Two main patterns of frozen
similes were considered: adjectival ground + simile marker + nominal vehicle
(e.g. happy as a lark) and eventuality + simile marker + nominal vehicle (e.g.
sleep like a top). All potential similes and their components were first
extracted using a rule-based algorithm. Then, frozen similes were identified
based on reference lists of existing similes and semantic distance between the
tenor and the vehicle. The results obtained tend to confirm the fact that
frozen similes are not used haphazardly in literary texts. In addition,
contrary to how they are often presented, frozen similes often go beyond the
ground or the eventuality and the vehicle to also include the tenor.
