Figure of Speech
Quick answer: A figure of speech is language used in a non-literal way to create meaning, from metaphor to hyperbole. Learn the main types poets rely on, with examples.
A figure of speech is any use of language that means something beyond, or other than, its literal sense: a comparison, an exaggeration, a substitution, a deliberate twist in word order. When you call a slow afternoon endless or say the kettle sang, you are already using figures of speech. Poetry does not own these devices, everyday talk is full of them, but poems concentrate them, choosing each figure with unusual care so it carries real weight.
Poets lean on figures of speech because literal statement can only report, while a figure can transform. Writing that you were sad tells the reader something; writing that grief moved into the spare room makes the sadness a lodger you can hear through the wall. Nearly every device in this glossary, from metaphor to apostrophe, names one figure or another, which makes this entry a map of the whole family.
Tropes and Schemes: The Two Big Families
Classical rhetoric sorted figures of speech into two camps. Tropes change what words mean: metaphor claims one thing is another, simile compares with like or as, personification gives human behaviour to the non-human, hyperbole exaggerates, metonymy swaps a thing for something associated with it, and irony says one thing while meaning its opposite. Schemes change how words are arranged without changing their sense: anaphora repeats an opening phrase, chiasmus mirrors a structure, and inversion reorders a sentence for emphasis.
The division is ancient but still useful. When a line feels flat, ask whether it needs a trope, a shift in meaning, or a scheme, a shift in shape. Often the fix is one or the other, not both.
How a Figure Works in a Poem
Take an invented line: the moon is a coin the night refuses to spend. On the surface it is a small metaphor, moon as coin. But the figure smuggles in more than resemblance. Coins imply value, hoarding, transactions that never happen, a night that keeps what it has. One figure of speech has quietly given the poem an economy, a mood of withholding, and a speaker who notices what is never given. That compression is why poets bother: a good figure does the work of a paragraph in nine words.
Using Figures in Your Own Poems
One strong figure beats five weak ones. Beginning poets often stack comparisons until the poem reads like a catalogue; experienced poets choose a figure and let it breathe, sometimes extending it across several lines. Keep your figures inside one sensory world unless the clash is deliberate: a poem set in a kitchen gains from figures drawn from heat, salt and steam, and loses focus when a spaceship lands in stanza three.
Watch for the mixed metaphor, two figures colliding mid-sentence, and for the dead metaphor, a phrase so worn that nobody pictures it any more. Reading your draft aloud, literally, catches most of both.
What poets can take from this
- Cut any figure that decorates without adding meaning; ornament alone is dead weight.
- Keep the figures in a poem drawn from one sensory world unless the clash is the point.
- Test each metaphor by extending it one line further; if it collapses, it was never load-bearing.
- Read the poem literally once through, which exposes mixed metaphors quickly.
- Prefer a figure rooted in the poem's own setting over a generic, borrowed one.
Try it yourself
Write a twelve-line poem about a routine chore, washing up, ironing, sweeping a floor, that uses exactly three figures of speech: one metaphor, one personification and one hyperbole. Then cut whichever of the three the poem needs least and see what the loss teaches you.
Questions
What is the difference between a figure of speech and figurative language?
Figurative language is the general mode of writing non-literally, while a figure of speech is any single named device within that mode. Metaphor, simile and hyperbole are all figures of speech, and a passage using them is written in figurative language.
Is a simile a figure of speech?
Yes. A simile is a trope, a figure that changes meaning by comparing two things using like or as. It is one of the most common figures in both poetry and everyday speech.
How many figures of speech should a poem contain?
There is no rule. Some fine poems are built on one sustained figure, others use several per stanza. What matters is that each figure earns its place by adding meaning the literal statement could not carry.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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