A figure of speech is a creative way of using words that means something different from their literal, dictionary definitions. When your mom says “I'm so hungry I could eat a horse,” she doesn't actually want to eat a horse. She's using a figure of speech called hyperbole (exaggeration) to express how hungry she feels.

Writers and speakers use figures of speech to make language more interesting, memorable, and powerful. When you say time crawls during a boring class, you're using a figure of speech called personification, giving time a human quality it doesn't really have. When you call your little brother a couch potato, you're using a metaphor, comparing him to something he isn't literally.

Other common figures of speech include similes (comparisons using “like” or “as”), idioms (phrases like “break a leg” that mean something completely different from the individual words), and onomatopoeia (words that sound like what they describe, like “buzz” or “crash”).

Figures of speech appear everywhere: in novels, poems, speeches, songs, and everyday conversation. They help us communicate feelings and ideas that plain, literal language might miss. When Shakespeare wrote “All the world's a stage,” he used a figure of speech to help readers see life in a completely new way.