Figurative Language

Figurative Language​

Unit: Figurative Language, Word Relationships, and Word Meaning​s

​What Is It?

• ​A way of explaining something in comparison to something else

• ​Words and phrases that do not have a literal meaning

• ​Ex: metaphors, allusions, similes, hyperbole

Simile

• ​The comparison of one thing to another using the words "like" or "as"

• ​Makes a description more vivid and intriguing in writing

• ​Ex:

  • ​"Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny" (III.i.137–138).

​Metaphor

• ​Makes a comparison between two objects

• ​States that one thing IS another thing

• ​Ex:

  • "The serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown" (1.5.39-40).

  • ​Ex: The world is a stage.

​Allusion

• ​An indirect reference to literary works, art, events, or people

• ​Ex: "My father’s brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules" (1.2.152–153).

​Hyperbole

• ​Exaggerated statements

• ​Not meant to be taken literally

• Ex: "I lov’d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not (with all their quantity of love) make up my sum" (5.1.269-271).