Chandlerism

plural Chandlerisms

1. A passage of writing or dialogue that uses vivid and lyrical metaphors or similes, characteristic of the work of writer Raymond Chandler.

   The funny thing is, Chandler would come up with a good image, pictorial, and like I said I would come up with a Chandlerism, as it were.

   2002, Film noir reader 3: interviews with filmmakers of the classic noir period, Limelight, page 110

   2 more examples

   As Rigby Reardon, Steve Martin easily mimics the patented Hollywood tough guy of the period, dangling a cigarette from one side of his mouth while distorting a Chandlerism from the other.

   1982, The Review of the news, volume 18

   I'm especially struck with the way you turn the Chandlerism, the colorful unlikely metaphor or simile, into legitimate novelistic indication of character, rather than trick writing for its own sake.

   1999 Anthony Boucher, letter to Kenneth Millar, published in Tom Nolan (1999) Ross Macdonald: a biography, p114