An attempt is made to illustrate the similarities in appraisals of emotion in cross-cultural constructions of similes and metaphors by comparing Western views to an example from Tamil. Data are drawn from works by the modern Tamil writer L. S. Ramamirtham. Cultural explanations are provided, and ideas of sensation, softness, movement (particularly toward entropy), and passive experience are explored in an assessment of the personal experience of emotions. Projective descriptions of emotion from one creature to another, including animals, whose feelings are believed to be known, are addressed. Factors of sex, locations in the body where one feels emotions, and the relation between reason and emotion in the two cultures are also compared. (Copyright 1995, Sociological Abstracts, Inc., all rights reserved.) (M. Gordon in LLBA 1995, vol. 29, n. 4)