What is Figurative Language?

What is Figurative Language?

Whenever you describe something by comparing it with something else,
you are using figurative language. 

Simile

A simile uses the words “like” or “as”
to compare one object or idea with another to suggest they are alike.
Example: busy as a bee

Metaphor

The metaphor states a fact or draws a verbal picture by the use of comparison.
A simile would say you are like something; a metaphor is more positive - it says you are something.
Example: You are what you eat.

Personification  

A figure of speech in which human characteristics are given
to an animal or an object. Example: My teddy bear gave me a hug.

Alliteration

The repetition of the same initial letter, sound, or group of sounds in a series of words.
Alliteration includes tongue twisters. Example: She sells seashells by the seashore.

Onomatopoeia

The use of a word to describe or imitate a natural sound or the sound
made by an object or an action. Example: snap crackle pop

Hyperbole

An exaggeration that is so dramatic that no one would believe the statement is true.
Tall tales are hyperboles.
Example: He was so hungry, he ate that whole cornfield for lunch, stalks and all.

Idioms

According to Webster's Dictionary, an idiom is defined as: peculiar to itself
either grammatically (as no, it wasn't me) or in having a meaning
that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements
(as Monday week for "the Monday a week after next Monday")

Clichés 

A cliché is an expression that has been used so often that it has become trite
and sometimes boring. Example: Many hands make light work.

Figurative Language

Metaphor	The Silken Tent	Putting in the Seed	Devotion	To Earthward	All Revelation
Simile	Mending Wall	Stars	Going for Water	Birches	Hyla Brook
Symbol	The Road Not Taken	Rose Pogonias	Stopping by Woods	The Pasture & Directive	Come In
Personifi- cation	My November Guest	Mowing	Range-Finding	Tree at my Window	Storm Fear
Apostrophe	Take Some- thing like a Star	Tree at my Window	Mending Wall
Synecdoche	Stopping by Woods	The Gift Outright	I Will Sing You One-O	Kitty Hawk	Fire and Ice
Metonymy	Out, Out
Allegory or Parable	After Apple- Picking	The Grindstone	The Lockless Door	Birches	Design
Paradox	Nothing Gold Can Stay	The Gift Outright	Ghost House	Fire and Ice	The Tuft of Flowers
Hyperbole	A Star in a Stoneboat	Etherealizing	After Apple-Picking	Stopping by Woods	The Milky Way is a Cowpath
Under Statement	Fire and Ice	Mowing	Hyla Brook	My November Guest	Brown's Descent
Irony	Birches	Range-Finding	The Road Not Taken	Ghost House	Stars

Figurative Language

Figurative language uses "figures of speech" - a way of saying something other than the literal meaning of the words. For example, "All the world's a stage" Frost often referred to them simply as "figures." Frost said, "Every poem I write is figurative in two senses. It will have figures in it, of course; but it's also a figure in itself - a figure for something, and it's made so that you can get more than one figure out of it." Cook Voices p235