figure of speech

expression using words in a nonliteral or unusual sense

forms of expression in which words are used out of their literal sense to suggest a picture or image (simile, metaphor, personification, etc.)

A figure of speech, sometimes termed a rhetoric, or elocution, is a word or phrase that departs from straightforward, literal language. Figures of speech are often used and crafted for emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use. Note that all theories of meaning necessarily have a concept of "literal language" (see literal and figurative language). Under theories that do not, figure of speech is not an entirely coherent concept.
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Noun
1. language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense
(synonym) trope, figure, image
(hypernym) rhetorical device
(hyponym) irony
(class) lens
(class) blind alley

Synonyms and related words:
adornment, alliteration, allusion, anacoluthon, anadiplosis, analogy, anaphora, anastrophe, antiphrasis, antithesis, antonomasia, apophasis, aporia, aposiopesis, apostrophe, beauties, catachresis, chiasmus, circumlocution, climax, colors, colors of rhetoric, conversion, ecphonesis, elegant variation, embellishment, embroidery, emphasis, exclamation, figure, fine writing, floridity, floridness, flourish, floweriness, flowers of speech, frill, gemination, hypallage, hyperbaton, hyperbole, inversion, irony, litotes, lushness, luxuriance, malapropism, meiosis, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, ornament, ornamentation, oxymoron, paregmenon, parenthesis, periphrasis, personification, pleonasm, preterition, prolepsis, purple patches, regression, repetition, sarcasm, simile, similitude, spoonerism, syllepsis, symploce, synecdoche, zeugma
  

figure-of speech /'figərəv'spi:tʃ/
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