Figurative Language

1. Figurative Language alliteration simile onomatopoeia hyperbole metaphor idiom personification imagery

2. Figurative Language • language is writing or speech that is not meant to be taken literally. Figures of speech involve some sort of imaginative comparison between seemingly unlike things.

3. Alliteration • repeated consonant or vowel sounds at the beginning of words. (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.)

4. Hyperbole • an exaggeration or understatement used for effect. (It’s taking forever!)

5. Idiom • an exaggeration that, taken literally, means something other than it does figuratively. (It’s raining cats and dogs. You are driving me up a wall. We’re in a pickle now.)

6. Imagery • Descriptive language used to appeal to the five senses and to create vivid mental pictures. (The sparkling snowflakes floated silently down from the heavens to rest on everything creating a crisp blanket of glistening white.)

7. Metaphor • a comparison between two unlike things in which one thing becomes another. (She was a lioness protecting her children when the stranger approached their yard.)

8. Onomatopoeia • the use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning. (buzz, whoosh, splash, zip)

9. Personification • a special kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human. (The wind whistled through the dancing trees.)

10. Simile • a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”. (Her eyes twinkle like the stars in the heavens.)