FIGURE OF SPEECH
Dictionary entry overview: What does figure of speech mean?
• FIGURE OF SPEECH (noun)
The noun FIGURE OF SPEECH has 1 sense:
1. language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense
Familiarity information: FIGURE OF SPEECH used as a noun is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
• FIGURE OF SPEECH (noun)
Meaning:
Language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Synonyms:
figure of speech; trope; image; figure
Hypernyms ("figure of speech" is a kind of...):
rhetorical device (a use of language that creates a literary effect (but often without regard for literal significance))
Domain member usage:
blind alley ((figurative) a course of action that is unproductive and offers no hope of improvement)
lens ((metaphor) a channel through which something can be seen or understood)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "figure of speech"):
conceit (an elaborate poetic image or a far-fetched comparison of very dissimilar things)
synecdoche (substituting a more inclusive term for a less inclusive one or vice versa)
simile (a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with 'like' or 'as'))
personification; prosopopoeia (representing an abstract quality or idea as a person or creature)
oxymoron (conjoining contradictory terms (as in 'deafening silence'))
metonymy (substituting the name of an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself (as in 'they counted heads'))
metaphor (a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity)
kenning (conventional metaphoric name for something, used especially in Old English and Old Norse poetry)
exaggeration; hyperbole (extravagant exaggeration)
irony (a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs)
zeugma (use of a word to govern two or more words though appropriate to only one)
