Types of Figurative Language

Various types of figurative languages can be used to create meaning in a literary piece. According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary, the terms appear as follows:

• Simile: A figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared as in “she is like a rose”.

• Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God”.

• Personification: An imaginary person or creature conceived or figured to represent a thing or abstraction.

• Repetition: The act of repeating, or doing, saying or writing something again; repeated action, performance, production, or presentation.

• Symbolism: The practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character.

• Onomatopoeia: The use of imitative and naturally suggestive words for rhetorical, dramatic, or poetic effect.

• Irony: The use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.

• Litotes: Understatement, especially that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary, as in “not bad at all.”.

• Pleonasm: The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy.

• Metonymy: A figure of speech that consists of the use of the name of one object or concept for that of another to which it is related, or of which it is a part, as “scepter” for “sovereignty,” of “the bottle” for “strong drink,” or “count heads (or noses)” for “count people”.

• Euphemism: The substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt.

• Meaning: What is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated, signification.

In researching these types of meanings we can see that the meaning of the figures of speech revolve around the complete sentences, not just the word themselves.