Figurative Language7th Grade Language Arts

Figurative language is language that is not meant to be taken literally.

Figurative Language

For Example . . .

Simile MetaphorExtended metaphorPersonificationSymbolAnalogyParadoxIdiom

SimileDefinition:

compares two unlike things using a word such as like or as.

For Example . . .

Her love was like a rose, beautiful and thorny.

He was angry as a hornet.

The moon is as shiny as a silver pendant.

She shines like a diamond.

Metaphors: compares two unlike things by stating that one thing is

another thing.

She is a diamond.

The moon is a silver

pendant.

He is a hornet.

Her love is a rose.

Extended Metaphor

Definition:several related comparisons extend over a number of lines.

Example:

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Definition:

gives human characteristics to a nonhuman subject.

Example:

The sea was angry, my friend.

Personification

Analogy

Definition:

an extended comparison of relationships. An analogy shows one relationship between one pair of things to another pair.Example:

Walter lives like a sheet of paper blown along a windy street. He is carried this way and that way with no control of his direction.

Paradox: a statement, an idea or a situation that seems contradictory but

actually expresses the truth.

Example:

The more things change; the more they stay the same.

Idiom

Definition:

an expression whose meaning differs from the meanings of its individual words. Example:

It was raining cats and dogs last night.