Figurative Language

What you’ll learn

• Figurative language means more than the literal words; the first reading move is to ask whether a phrase is literally true.
• A simile compares with like or as; a metaphor says one thing is another. Both compare genuinely unlike things.
• Personification gives human traits to nonhuman things; hyperbole exaggerates on purpose; an idiom carries a fixed meaning you cannot build from its words.
• Imagery paints with the five senses; a symbol keeps its literal identity while standing for a larger idea.
• Connotation is the feeling a word carries beyond its denotation, and word choice builds tone; naming the effect matters more than naming the device.