Sample sentences for FIGURE OF SPEECH

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Definition

language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense; e.g., metaphors, similes, and hyperbole

"Figure of speech," he said.
John Gardner -- The Sunlight Dialogues

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.
George Orwell -- Politics and the English Language
And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death.
Virginia Woolf -- A Room of One's Own
"Figure of speech, dear boy," said the smee.
Henry H. Neff -- The Fiend And The Forge
Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels -- The Communist Manifesto
'You've used the word commando several times, I assume not as a figure of speech.
Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy
"A metaphor, or simply a figure of speech?" he says, also frowning.
Veronica Roth -- Insurgent
"Figure of speech, Davie," quipped Connor with a wink.
Henry H. Neff -- The Second Siege
"That .... that was just a figure of speech," Lawson explained, blinking, "I was speaking metaphorically."
Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged
"That," I snarled at him, "was a figure of speech.
Megan Whalen Turner -- The Thief
Poor is sometimes a figure of speech.
Gail Carson Levine -- Ella Enchanted
It's just a figure of speech.
Cassandra Clare -- City of Lost Souls
This is no figure of speech: he knew the veld he lived from as the natives know it.
Doris Lessing -- The Grass is Singing
"Entropy is a figure of speech, then," sighed Nefastis, "a metaphor.
Thomas Pynchon -- The Crying of Lot 49
That's a figure of speech ... isn't it?
Tom Stoppard -- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
It's just a figure of speech.
Haruki Murakami -- After Dark
He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech.
George Eliot -- Adam Bede
A figure of speech, forget it.
Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Ultimatum
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.
Charles Dickens -- Great Expectations
A figure of speech; his studio's at the end of the corridor, but it is a holy sacristy.
Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Identity

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figure of speech