Key details about figurative language:
• Figurative language is common in all sorts of writing, as well as in spoken language.
• Figurative language refers to language that contains figures of speech, while figures of
speech are the particular techniques. If figurative speech is like a dance routine, figures of
speech are like the various moves that make up the routine.
• It's a common misconception that imagery, or vivid descriptive language, is a kind of
figurative language. In fact, writers can use figurative language as one tool to help create
imagery, but imagery does not have to use figurative language.
Figures of Speech and Figurative Language
To fully understand figurative language, it's helpful to have a basic understanding of figures of
speech. More specifically, it's helpful to understand the two main types of figures of
speech: tropes and schemes.
• Tropes are figures of speech that play with and shift the expected and literal meaning of
words.
• Schemes are figures of speech that involve a change from the typical mechanics of a
sentence, such as the order, pattern, or arrangement of words.
Put even more simply: tropes play with the meaning of words, while schemes play with the
structure of words, phrases, and sentences.
Why Do Writers Use Figurative Language?
The term figurative language refers to a whole host of different figures of speech, so it's difficult
to provide a single definitive answer to why writers use figurative language. That said, writers
use figurative language for a wide variety of reasons:
• Interest and beauty: Figurative language allows writes to express descriptions, ideas,
and more in ways that are unique and beautiful.
• Complexity and power: Because figurative language can create meanings that go
beyond the literal, it can capture complex ideas, feelings, descriptions, or truths that cause
readers to see things in a new way, or more closely mirror the complex reality of the
world.
• Visceral affect: Because figurative language can both impact the rhythm and sound of
language, and also connect the abstract (say, love) with the concrete (say, a rose), it can
help language make an almost physical impact on a reader.
• Humor: By allowing a writer to layer additional meanings over literal meanings, or even
to imply intended meanings that are the opposite of the literal meaning, figurative
language gives writers all sorts of options for creating humor in their writing.
• Realism: People speak and even think in terms of the sorts of comparisons that underlie
so much figurative language. Rather than being flowery, figurative language allows
writers to describe things in ways that match how people really think about them, and to
create characters who themselves feel real.
In general, figurative language often makes writing feel at once more accessible and powerful,
more colorful, surprising, and deep.
Common Types of Figurative Language
There are many, many types of figures of speech that can be involved in figurative language.
Some of the most common are:
• Metaphor: A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unrelated things by
stating that one thing is another thing, even though this isn't literally true. For example,
the phrase "her lips are a blooming rose" obviously doesn't literally mean what it says—
it's a metaphor that makes a comparison between the red beauty and promise of a
blooming rose with that of the lips of the woman being described.
• Simile: A simile, like a metaphor, makes a comparison between two unrelated things.
However, instead of stating that one thing is another thing (as in metaphor), a simile
states that one thing is like another thing. An example of a simile would be to say "they
fought like cats and dogs."
• Oxymoron: An oxymoron pairs contradictory words in order to express new or complex
meanings. In the phrase "parting is such sweet sorrow" from Romeo and Juliet, "sweet
sorrow" is an oxymoron that captures the complex and simultaneous feelings of pain and
pleasure associated with passionate love.
• Hyperbole: Hyperbole is an intentional exaggeration of the truth, used to emphasize the
importance of something or to create a comic effect. An example of a hyperbole is to say
that a backpack "weighs a ton." No backpack literally weighs a ton, but to say "my
backpack weighs ten pounds" doesn't effectively communicate how burdensome a heavy
backpack feels.
• Personification: In personification, non-human things are described as having human
attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent to
their plans." Describing the rain as "indifferent" is an example of personification, because
rain can't be "indifferent," nor can it feel any other human emotion.
• Idiom: An idiom is a phrase that, through general usage within a particular group or
society, has gained a meaning that is different from the literal meaning of the words. The
phrase "it's raining cats and dogs" is known to most Americans to mean that it's raining
hard, but an English-speaking foreigner in the United States might find the phrase totally
confusing.
• Onomatopoeia: Onomatopoeia is a figure of speech in which words evoke the actual
sound of the thing they refer to or describe. The “boom” of a firework exploding, the
“tick tock” of a clock, and the “ding dong” of a doorbell are all examples of
onomatopoeia.
• Synecdoche: In synecdoche, a part of something is used to refer to its whole. For
example, "The captain commands one hundred sails" is a synecdoche that uses "sails" to
refer to ships—ships being the thing of which a sail is a part.
• Metonymy: Metonymy is a figure of speech in which an object or concept is referred to
not by its own name, but instead by the name of something closely associated with it. For
example, in "Wall Street prefers lower taxes," the New York City street that was the
original home of the New York Stock Exchange stands in for (or is a "metonym" for) the
entire American financial industry.
• Alliteration: In alliteration, the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the “b”
sound in: “Bob brought the box of bricks to the basement.” Alliteration uses repetition to
create a musical effect that helps phrases to stand out from the language around them.
• Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds repeat in nearby words, such as the "ee"
sound: "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." Like alliteration, assonance uses repeated
sounds to create a musical effect in which words echo one another.
Figurative Language Example: Metaphor
Metaphor in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo uses the following metaphor in Act 2 Scene 2
of Romeo and Juliet, after sneaking into Juliet's garden and catching a glimpse of her on her
balcony:
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Explanation: Romeo compares Juliet to the sun not only to describe how radiantly beautiful she
is, but also to convey the full extent of her power over him. He's so taken with Juliet that her
appearances and disappearances affect him like those of the sun. His life "revolves" around Juliet
like the earth orbits the sun.
Figurative Language Example: Simile
In this example of a simile from Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim emerges from an
underground slaughterhouse where he has been held prisoner by the Germans during the deadly
World War II firebombing of Dresden:
It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their
guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little
pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody
else in the neighborhood was dead.
Explanation:Vonnegut uses simile to compare the bombed city of Dresden to the moon in order
to capture the totality of the devastation—the city is so lifeless that it is like the barren moon.
Figurative Language Example: Oxymoron
These lines from Chapter 7 of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls describe an
encounter between Robert Jordan, a young American soldier fighting in the Spanish Civil War,
and his lover María.
She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and then found them and were against
them and he felt her, fresh, new and smooth and young and lovely with the warm, scalding
coolness and unbelievable to be there in the robe that was as familiar as his clothes, or his
shoes, or his duty and then she said, frightenedly, “And now let us do quickly what it is we do so
that the other is all gone.”
Explanation:The couple's relationship becomes a bright spot for both of them in the midst of
war, but ultimately also a source of pain and confusion for Jordan, as he struggles to balance his
obligation to fight with his desire to live happily by Maria's side. The contradiction contained
within the oxymoron "scalding coolness" emphasizes the couple's conflicting emotions and
impossible situation.
Figurative Language Example: Hyperbole
Elizabeth Bennet, the most free-spirited character in Pride and Prejudice, refuses Mr. Darcy's
first marriage proposal with a string of hyperbole:
From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you,
your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your
selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of
disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not
known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be
prevailed on to marry.
Explanation:Elizabeth's closing statement, that Darcy is the "last man in the world" whom she
would ever marry, is an obvious hyperbole. It's hard to believe that Elizabeth would rather
marry, say, an axe murderer or a diseased pirate than Mr. Darcy. Even beyond the obvious
exaggeration, Austen's use of hyperbole in this exchange hints at the fact that Elizabeth's feelings
for Darcy are more complicated than she admits, even to herself. Austen drops various hints
throughout the beginning of the novel that Elizabeth feels something beyond mere dislike for
Darcy. Taken together with these hints, Elizabeth's hyperbolic statements seem designed to
convince not only Darcy, but also herself, that their relationship has no future.
Figurative Language Example: Personification
In Chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne describes a wild rose bush that grows
in front of Salem's gloomy wooden jail:
But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered,
in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance
and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth
to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
Explanation:In the context of the novel's setting in 17th century Boston, this rose bush, which
grows wild in front of an establishment dedicated to enforcing harsh puritan values, symbolizes
those elements of human nature that cannot be repressed, no matter how strict a community's
moral code may be: desire, fertility, and a love of beauty. By personifying the rosebush as
"offering" its blossoms to reflect Nature's pity (Nature is also personified here as having a
"heart"), Hawthorne turns the passive coincidence of the rosebush's location into an image of
human nature actively resisting its constraints.
Figurative Language Example: Onomatopoeia
In Act 3, Scene 3 of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Caliban uses onomatopoeia to convey the
noises of the island.
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices...
Explanation:The use of onomatopoeia makes the audience feel the sounds on the island, rather
than just have to take Caliban's word about there being noises.
Figurative Language Example: Synecdoche
In Act 4, Scene 3 of Shakespeare's Macbeth, an angry Macbeth kicks out a servant by saying:
Take thy face hence.
Explanation:Here, "thy face" stands in for "you." Macbeth is simply telling the servant to leave,
but his use of synecdoche makes the tone of his command more harsh and insulting because he
uses synecdoche to treat the servant not as a person but as an object, a body part.
Figurative Language Example: Metonymy
In his song "Juicy," Notorious B.I.G. raps:
Now I'm in the limelight 'cause I rhyme tight
Explanation:Here he's using "limelight" as a metonymy for fame (a "limelight" was a kind of
spotlight used in old theaters, and so it came to be associated with the fame of being in the
spotlight). Biggie's use of metonymy here also sets him up for a sweet rhyme.
Figurative Language Example: Alliteration
In his song "Rap God," Eminem shows his incredible lyrical dexterity by loading up
the alliteration:
So I wanna make sure, somewhere in this chicken scratch I
Scribble and doodle enough rhymes
To maybe try to help get some people through tough times
But I gotta keep a few punchlines
Just in case, ‘cause even you unsigned
Rappers are hungry looking at me like it's lunchtime…
Explanation: The use of alliteration is known to produce flow and rhythm that makes the
writing more memorable
