figure of speech

Noun
  1. Language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense (synset 107120141)
    domain member usage:
    • cakewalk - an easy accomplishment
    • blind alley - (figurative) a course of action that is unproductive and offers no hope of improvement
    • blockbuster, megahit, smash hit - an unusually successful hit with widespread popularity and huge sales (especially a movie or play or recording or novel)
    • sleeper - an unexpected hit
    • bell ringer, bull's eye, home run, mark - something that exactly succeeds in achieving its goal
    • housecleaning - (figurative) the act of reforming by the removal of unwanted personnel or practices or conditions
    • goldbrick - anything that is supposed to be valuable but turns out to be worthless
    • helm - (figurative) a position of leadership
    • lens - (metaphor) a channel through which something can be seen or understood
    • domino effect - the consequence of one event setting off a chain of similar events (like a falling domino causing a whole row of upended dominos to fall)
    • flip side - a different aspect of something (especially the opposite aspect)
    • period - the end or completion of something
    • summer - the period of finest development, happiness, or beauty
    • dawn - an opening time period
    • evening - a later concluding time period
    • rainy day - a (future) time of financial need
    is a type of: rhetorical device - a use of language that creates a literary effect (but often without regard for literal significance)
    subtypes:
    • conceit - an elaborate poetic image or a far-fetched comparison of very dissimilar things
    • irony - a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs
    • exaggeration, hyperbole - extravagant exaggeration
    • kenning - conventional metaphoric name for something, used especially in Old English and Old Norse poetry
    • 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
    • metonymy - substituting the name of an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself (as in `they counted heads')
    • oxymoron - conjoining contradictory terms (as in `deafening silence')
    • personification, prosopopoeia - representing an abstract quality or idea as a person or creature
    • simile - a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with `like' or `as')
    • synecdoche - substituting a more inclusive term for a less inclusive one or vice versa
    • zeugma - use of a verb with two or more complements, playing on the verb's polysemy, for humorous effect
    same as: figure, image, trope

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