Figurative language is funny, isn't it? Similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, litotes, and all the rest aren't lying -- they are helping us better understand the author's meaning. In this poem by Carl Sandburg, for example:
The fog comes
On little cat feet.
It sits looking
Over harbor and city
On silent haunches
And then moves on.
In this poem, Mr. Sandburg uses both personification and metaphor. The fog is described as a living being, a cat, and is described to be a cat, not just like a cat.
Here are the main types of figurative language:
- Simile - uses like or as to compare one thing to another: fast as a rabbit, clever like a fox.
- Metaphor - compares to things by saying that one is the other; he is a weasel.
- Hyperbole - exaggeration; my brother is so weird that aliens think he's one of them.
- Litotes - it's like understatement: you say the opposite of what you mean and stick a not in front; he's not the sharpest stick in the woods.
- Personification - making an inanimate element of your story do things that people or animals usually do; the wind played in the grasses.