toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

figure of speech
in a sentence

show 52 more with this conextual meaning
  • Sometimes, when thinking about this, I thought that the idea that one person's mind is accessible to another's is just a conversational illusion, just a figure of speech, an assumption that makes some kind of exchange between basically alien creatures seem plausible, and that really the relationship of one person to another is ultimately unknowable.†   (source)
  • Quiet as it's kept" is also a figure of speech that is written, in this instance, but clearly chosen for how speakerly it is, how it speaks and bespeaks a particular world and its ambience.†   (source)
  • It's just a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • It's just a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • Figure of speech.†   (source)
  • The phrase "bite my head off" was not entirely a figure of speech when it came to Leah.†   (source)
  • "That," I snarled at him, "was a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • A slight figure of speech
    I cut my chest wide open
    They come and watch us bleed
    Is it art like I was hoping now?
    —THE AVETT BROTHERS, "SLIGHT FIGURE OF SPEECH"
    WHEN WE ENTER THE BUILDING, I IMMEDIATELY SEARCH for Will.†   (source)
  • Poor is sometimes a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • Just a figure of speech, dear.†   (source)
  • A figure of speech, forget it.†   (source)
  • It's just a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • "That …. that was just a figure of speech," Lawson explained, blinking, "I was speaking metaphorically."†   (source)
  • "Figure of speech, Davie," quipped Connor with a wink.†   (source)
  • That's a figure of speech … isn't it?†   (source)
  • "Entropy is a figure of speech, then," sighed Nefastis, "a metaphor.†   (source)
  • Having been swept off her feet (no figure of speech but a literal truth, for that is just what he had done two hours before; carrying her crumpled in his arms from the library to the place by the curb where he had hailed the taxi), she could only nod and say yes and smile a smile which still lingered as she heard him clatter down the steps.†   (source)
  • "Figure of speech," he said.†   (source)
  • Star was more different women than a platoon of WACs—which is only mildly a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • Just a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • This is no figure of speech: he knew the veld he lived from as the natives know it.†   (source)
  • Or is a metaphor a definite category beneath the heading of 'figure of speech'?†   (source)
  • "It's just a figure of speech, man," Percy said.†   (source)
  • 'You've used the word commando several times, I assume not as a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • "Figure of speech, dear boy," said the smee.†   (source)
  • A figure of speech; his studio's at the end of the corridor, but it is a holy sacristy.†   (source)
  • The figure of speech cold shoulder seemed to have some literal truth to it.†   (source)
  • It could have been a figure of speech: very little time before the wolves arrive.†   (source)
  • ——THE AVETT BROTHERS, "SLIGHT FIGURE OF SPEECH"†   (source)
  • A figure of speech, I've never known a mink that well.†   (source)
  • Once as a boy sitting in the Tidewater Theatre with my father as we watched a W. C. Fields movie (I believe it was My Little Chickadee) I saw happen what was supposed to happen only as a figure of speech, or in cornball works of fiction: I saw my father caught up in a rapture of such mind-dissolving laughter that he slid completely out of his seat and into the aisle.†   (source)
  • And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death.†   (source)
  • That's quite en passant—merely a convenient figure of speech—nothing personal at all.†   (source)
  • That is no figure of speech; it is fact.†   (source)
  • She had often heard of people cutting off their noses to spite their faces but heretofore it had been only a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • I think the following rules will cover most cases: (i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.†   (source)
  • Might be only a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • My reference to the Devil was merely a figure of speech, I assure you.†   (source)
  • It is what we call a figure of speech—speech at a high figure, as one may say.†   (source)
  • So it was that, following the advice given him by a wise mother on his first coming up to the capital from his provincial home, he would never let pass either a figure of speech or a proper name that was new to him without an effort to secure the fullest information upon it.†   (source)
  • For Hans Castorp, the experience was much like seeing Wiedemann's hair stand on end—he had thought it was a mere figure of speech, something that did not occur in reality.†   (source)
  • Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.†   (source)
  • ' "Well, I am glad to hear that," said the genius, looking very grim, "because a joke, without any figure of speech, IS the death of me.†   (source)
  • 'The friendliness of this gentleman,' said Mr. Micawber to my aunt, 'if you will allow me, ma'am, to cull a figure of speech from the vocabulary of our coarser national sports — floors me.†   (source)
  • His salient angles fitted into the retreating angles of the cathedral (if we may be allowed this figure of speech), and he seemed not only its inhabitant but more than that, its natural tenant.†   (source)
  • I heerd him!" and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him.†   (source)
  • He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech.†   (source)
  • This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for, unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away—even couplets from Pope may be but "fallings from us, vanishings," when fear clutches us, and a glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among our ideas.†   (source)
  • They are, indeed, a figure of speech occasionally prompted by passion, and I have made use of them as such; but I have endeavoured utterly to reject them as a mechanical device of style, or as a family language which Writers in metre seem to lay claim to by prescription.†   (source)
  • For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life.†   (source)
  • It is competent for any individual to offer his contribution—his new word, his better idiom, his novel figure of speech, his short cut in grammar or syntax—and it is by the general vote of the whole body, not by the verdict of a small school, that the fate of the innovation is decided.†   (source)
  • The words, "This is my Body," are aequivalent to these, "This signifies, or represents my Body;" and it is an ordinary figure of Speech: but to take it literally, is an abuse; nor though so taken, can it extend any further, than to the Bread which Christ himself with his own hands Consecrated.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)