Figurative Language: Types, Examples and How to Spot It

If someone says I'm drowning in emails, nobody calls the lifeguard. Everyone understands that the speaker has too many messages, not too much water. That small act of understanding is figurative language at work, and English is full of it. You meet it in novels, news headlines, advertisements, song lyrics and the way colleagues talk on a busy Monday. Learners often get stuck on it, because looking up each word does not help when the words are not meant literally. This guide explains what figurative language is and walks through the types you are most likely to meet.

Literal and figurative

Literal language means what the words plainly say. The meeting starts at nine is literal. Figurative language is wording something in a way other than the ordinary, literal way. The reference article on figures of speech says writers do this to heighten feeling, evoke a more complex meaning or make an unexpected connection in the reader's mind. Wiktionary's definition of figurative says the same thing from the dictionary side: relating to figures of speech, such as metaphor, simile or metonymy, rather than to literal meaning.

You will also see the terms figure of speech and trope. They overlap heavily with figurative language, and in everyday writing you can treat them as near synonyms. What matters is the habit of mind: when the literal reading makes no sense, or makes a very odd sense, look for a figurative one.

The main types, with examples

Simile

A simile compares two things that are not usually connected, and it says so with like or as. Her voice was as smooth as honey. He ran like the wind. The marker word is the giveaway, which makes similes the easiest type to spot.

Metaphor

A metaphor makes the same kind of comparison without the marker. It says one thing is another. Time is a thief. The classroom was a zoo. Because there is no like or as, you have to notice that the statement cannot be literally true. Metaphors are so common in everyday speech that we often stop noticing them: the price of gas is climbing describes numbers as if they were hikers.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration for effect. I've told you a million times. This bag weighs a ton. Nobody believes the number, and that is the point. The speaker wants to show how strongly they feel. Hyperbole is easy to overuse, and a page full of it starts to sound shouty.

Personification

Personification gives human traits to something that is not human. The wind whispered through the trees. My laptop refuses to cooperate. Advertising uses it constantly, as when a cleaning product "attacks" dirt.

Irony

Irony presents something that is opposite to what is expected. There are two common kinds. In verbal irony, a speaker says the opposite of what they mean: looking out at pouring rain and saying lovely weather we're having. In situational irony, events turn out opposite to what people expected, such as a fire station burning down. Irony works only when the listener can tell what is really meant, so tone and context carry a lot of weight.

Understatement

Understatement presents something as less important or intense than it is. After a hurricane, it was a bit breezy is understatement. A related form uses negation, as in not bad for very good. English speakers, especially British ones, use it for humor and for politeness. If you take it literally you can miss the real message.

Oxymoron

An oxymoron is a short paradox, often built from two opposite words side by side: deafening silence, bittersweet, living dead, jumbo shrimp. Each half pulls against the other, and together they describe something that is hard to name in one word.

Metonymy

Metonymy refers to something by a related object, part or feature. The crown can mean the monarchy. Wall Street can mean the financial industry. A well-known subtype, synecdoche, uses a part to stand for the whole: all hands on deck asks for people, not just hands.

Idioms

Idioms are fixed phrases whose meaning cannot be worked out from the separate words, and many of them started life as figures of speech. Spill the beans has nothing to do with beans, and kick the bucket has nothing to do with a bucket. The guide to common everyday idioms explains many that learners meet in their first years of English.

How to tell what is figurative

When a sentence puzzles you, run through these questions.

1. Does the literal meaning make sense here? If it does not, a figurative reading is likely. The news hit me like a truck cannot be literal, because you are still standing.
2. Is there a comparison? Look for like, as or is. A comparison usually means a simile or a metaphor.
3. Is it too big or too small? An extreme number or an oddly mild word points to hyperbole or understatement.
4. Does the speaker mean the opposite? Check the tone and the situation before you decide. That is the sign of irony.
5. Is it a fixed phrase? If the words never change and the meaning is not guessable, it is probably an idiom. Look it up as a whole.

Using figurative language in your own writing

Learners sometimes either avoid figurative language altogether or pile it on. Both extremes sound odd. A few habits help.

• Prefer one clear image to three. A paragraph with a simile, a metaphor and a personification fighting for attention is harder to read than one with a single good comparison.
• Keep the image consistent. We need to hit the ground running and keep all our balls in the air mixes two pictures and makes the reader smile for the wrong reason.
• Match the register. Formal reports use few figures of speech, while stories and speeches use more. Formal and informal vocabulary helps you decide where each kind belongs.
• Check that it travels. An idiom that is natural in one country may confuse readers in another. If your reader is an international audience, say it plainly.

Practice set

Name the figure of speech in each sentence: simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, irony, understatement or oxymoron.

1. The old car coughed and groaned up the hill.
2. My brother is a night owl.
3. She was as quiet as a mouse.
4. I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.
5. After the storm destroyed the roof, he said, "We had a little weather."
6. The comedy was seriously funny.
7. The fire station burned down.
8. A teacher says, "Great, another surprise test," when she is annoyed.

Answers: 1. Personification (a car cannot cough or groan). 2. Metaphor (he is not a bird, but he stays up late). 3. Simile (as ... as). 4. Hyperbole. 5. Understatement. 6. Oxymoron (seriously funny pairs two opposed ideas). 7. Situational irony. 8. Verbal irony.

Making it stick

Figurative language is easiest to learn from reading. When you meet a phrase that does not parse, mark it, work out the real meaning from the context, and save it with the sentence it came from. Review it on a schedule, as described in how spaced repetition works, so it stays with you. Over time, you start to hear the second meaning without having to stop and decode it.

How Wordabulary fits in

Wordabulary finds your level with a placement assessment, then gives you practice and quizzes matched to it. Word pages show the definition, an example sentence and related forms, so you can see how a word behaves in a sentence before you meet it in a story or a speech.