Figurative language means using words in imaginative ways that aren't meant to be taken literally. When you say “I'm so hungry I could eat a horse,” you don't actually plan to eat a horse. You're speaking figuratively to emphasize how hungry you feel.

Writers use figurative language to make their writing more vivid and interesting. Instead of saying “the test was hard,” a student might say “the test was a monster,” painting a mental picture that captures the feeling better than a plain description. Poets rely heavily on figurative language, comparing love to a red rose or describing time as a thief.

The opposite of figurative is literal, which means exactly what the words say. If you literally ran a mile, you actually ran 5,280 feet. If you figuratively ran a million miles today, you probably just had a busy day with lots of errands.

Common types of figurative language include metaphors (calling something by another name, like “her smile was sunshine”), similes (comparisons using “like” or “as,” such as “brave as a lion”), and personification (giving human qualities to non-human things, like “the wind whispered”). When your English teacher asks you to identify figurative language in a story, they want you to spot these creative uses of words that mean something beyond their dictionary definitions.