Figurative Language – Definition & Examples
What is figurative language? We define figurative language and give you 12 examples of figurative language.
What Is Figurative Language?
Figurative language is the stuff that, when done well, makes your book pop. It gives a richer visual and sensory environment to the reader, drawing them in and keeping them hooked on the page. A good piece of figurative writing can make your writing more colourful and powerful. It can increase the mood of the book’s genre.
Compare this line:
After he died, I went for a walk. It had rained last night, and everything, including the trees, were still wet and muddy.
To this one from the horror story, The Excellence Of Monsters:
The dripping sky fell, muted, onto the thick, rain-sodden grass, making puddles in the mud lurking between the spines of tree roots.
7 Results Of Using Figurative Language In Your Writing
- Bringing clarity to an idea that may be difficult for your reader to understand.
- Comparing two dissimilar ideas so that your reader has a better understanding of another single idea.
- Helping your reader to make connections between ideas and concepts.
- Influencing your readers, guide them into thoughts and reactions.
- Making it easier for your readers to visualise what you’re describing and, at the same time, enhance the mood of the story.
- Provoking an emotion from your reader.
- Revealing a deeper emotion or connection between concepts or characters.
There are quite a few different types of figurative language, and we tend to use them often in our everyday speech.
12 Examples Of Figurative Language
1. Alliteration
If you want to emphasise an emotion or a sound, put words that start with the same consonant close together in a sentence and repeat the letter, or letters that sound similar, in other words. In this example, from The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway, the repetitive ‘s’ evokes the sound of the sea flowing past the boat: But four hours later the fish was still swimming steadily out to sea, towing the skiff, and the old man was still braced solidly with the line across his back.
2. Allusion
By referring to a well-known person, location, object, or a historical or cultural event, or a piece of famous literature, you can draw on what the reader, hopefully, already knows. For example, having one character calling another a modern-day Gatsby will immediately make the reader understand that the character has a dubious past, is extremely wealthy, obsessive, and extravagant, reminiscent of the title character from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This deepens the meaning of your story.
If your allusions are subtle, can also become clues that observant readers will delight in. making them feel as if they share a secret with the writer. However, many readers may miss your allusion if it’s too subtle.
3. Hyperbole
The use of an extreme exaggeration to emphasize an emotion or a description is known as hyperbole. Some figurative language uses a combination of other figurative types. Hyperbole can mix simile and comparative words.
Example:
It was about as useful as a dead newt on a hot rock in the middle of a heatwave.
4. Idiom
Idioms are the most commonly used figurative language or phrases that we use in everyday language. The meaning of the idiom is completely different to its literal meaning. They are specific to a language and culture. A piece of cake when used as an idiom means ‘easy to do’.
More examples of idioms:
- 44 Idioms About Food
- 10 Idioms About Life
- 10 Colourful Idioms
- 10 Idioms About Home
- 15 Idioms For Periods Of Time
5. Litotes
Litotes is a fancy word or understatement, irony, or sarcasm. British writers or writers with a British sensibility are the best at this. It’s often not understood across the pond.
Example:
“Well, it’s interesting,” he said when I asked him what he thought of my painting.
A Brit would understand this to mean that the character thought the painting was bad.
6. Metaphor
A metaphor makes a comparison by relating two unlike things without using ‘like’ or ‘as’.
Example:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances. –As You Like It by William Shakespeare.
Metaphors are descriptions that while not true provide a deeper understanding of the concept the writer is trying to describe.
7. Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia are words that sound like their meaning, which means you don’t have to waste words describing the sound.
Examples include:
- Animal sounds – meow, bark, quack
- Machine sounds – honk
- Impact sounds – bang, crash, thud
- Natural sounds – drip, crackle
- Moving sounds – buzz, swoosh
- Human sounds – whisper
- Action sounds – slurp, gulp
- Group words – mob, herd
8. Oxymorons
An oxymoron is a combination of words that individually mean the opposite of each other. ‘Jumbo shrimp’, ‘burning cold’, ‘deafening silence’, ‘living dead’, and ‘pretty ugly’ are all good examples of oxymorons.
9. Personification
Giving inanimate objects, or animals, or weather, human characteristics and qualities makes them more relatable. The toy tiger Hobbs from Calvin And Hobbs by Bill Watterson is a great example of personification.
Example: The wind howled across the plain, screamed through the valley, and beat itself out against the cliff face before dying with a whimper.
10. Simile
Similes are easily recognised because they have the words, ‘like’, ‘as’, and ‘than’ linking two different concepts, using the one that comes after the ‘like’ to highlight something about the one that comes before. A writer relies on the readers’ ability to understand the comparison, and the similarity between the two concepts.
Example:
From 1984 by George Orwell: He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless.
11. Synecdoche
This figure of speech relies on ‘a part’ to conjure up an image or understanding of ‘the whole’. It’s most commonly used when referring to groups of people, objects, built items, or physical structures.
Examples:
She’s got an awesome set of wheels!
Let’s get feet on the ground.
The suits are meeting us at court.
Brand-names that have come to represent a type rather than just the original product are also a type of synecdoche. Kleenex, Hoover, Sellotape, and Band-Aid are all common examples of this.
12. Symbolism
A great device to use in your book is symbolism. It needs a light touch though or becomes a hammer that beats readers over the head. In Macbeth, blood becomes the symbol that drives the plot. Blood that is spoken about and seen on the characters represents family, life, ambition, murder, insanity, and revenge in the play.
Another good example is found in Beauty And The Beast. The symbol of a rose representing love and life bookends the story. Belle’s father takes a rose from what seems like an abandoned castle’s garden. The result is Belle persuading the Beast to free her father from the castle’s prison and take her instead. The rose under the glass dome represents the life of the beast. If he can’t find love before the last petal falls, he will remain a prisoner of the curse for the rest of his life. Only love will free him. Belle’s unconditional love is what rescues the two men that she loves the most.
There are many ways to introduce symbolism, and often most readers will miss it. Does this matter? No, not really. If a reader does pick it up, it will make the story richer and have more depth for them. In the short story, Time Anomaly, every character is named after an expensive watch brand, highlighting the fact that time is precious, we all only have so much of it, and in the story, it is unreliable, as are the characters.
Read: Is A Motif The Same As A Symbol?
The Last Word
The one thing you must watch out for when using figurative language is to not turn your writing into ‘purple prose’ – excessively ornate and elaborate writing, words that are too flowery, an over-abundance of adjectives, and sentences that are far too long. This kind of writing seldom serves the story. Instead, it’s showing off.
If you’d like to write for children, young adults, or adults, why not sign up for one of the rich and in-depth courses that Writers Write offers to learn how to write the best book you possibly can.
by Elaine Dodge. Author of The Harcourts of Canada series and The Device Hunter, Elaine trained as a graphic designer, then worked in design, advertising, and broadcast television. She now creates content, mostly in written form, including ghost writing business books, for clients across the globe, but would much rather be drafting her books and short stories.
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