figurative

comparative more figurative · superlative most figurative

1. Of use as a metaphor, simile, metonym or other figure of speech, as opposed to literal; using figures.

   The lovers she seems to pursue with her figurative language in fact retreat under the barrage of similes, metaphors and fables.

   2005 May 1, “The Sea of Love”, in New York Times

   2 more examples

   Into an error of this kind they have fallen, who have claimed for the proverb, and made it one of its necessary conditions, that it should be a figurative expression. A moment’s consideration will be sufficient to disprove this. How many proverbs, such as Haste makes waste;—Honesty is the best policy, with ten thousand more, have nothing figurative about them.

   1861, Richard Chenevix Trench, chapter 1, in Proverbs and Their Lessons, Fifth edition, page 18

   It is important to emphasize that Kafka as an autistic person was not always consciously aware his interpretations and writings were literal, thus the line between literal and figurative were not consciously clear for Kafka. This blurring stems from the specific focus of autistic persons who look at external predictable behavior of people and situations rather than at internal mental states of individuals. Kafka wrote from his autistic perspective in which the literal form is a default state of understanding the external world. For Kafka to move beyond the literal is not only to express that which cannot be said literally, but to express that which is not literal. The figurative is not simply not the literal, it is more than the literal. It is beyond the literal. The gap between the literal and the figurative, across which the reader is compelled by language to traverse, is for Kafka also the space which language cannot adequately express. The use of parable by Kafka marks his most concentrated effort to examine the space between language and that which is beyond language.

   2017 May 16, Jerry Stuger, “Kafka and Autism. The Undisclosed Logic Behind Kafka’s Work”, in Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, volume 47, →DOI, pages 2336–2347

   Synonyms: metaphorical, symbolic, tropic, allegorical

2. Metaphorically so called.
3. With many figures of speech.
4. Emblematic, symbolic; representative, exemplative.

   This, they will say, was figurative, and served, by God's appointment, but for a time, to shadow out the true glory of a more divine sanctity.

   [1594], Richard Hooker, edited by J[ohn] S[penser], Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, […], London: […] Iohn Windet, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page)

5. artRepresenting forms recognisable in life and clearly derived from real object sources, in contrast to abstract art.

   1875-1886, John Addington Symonds, Renaissance in Italy They belonged to a nation dedicated to the figurative arts, and they wrote for a public familiar with painted form.

   1 more example

   Megan Sixsmith sits on a low bench in the Buenas Yerbas Museum of Modern Art and stares back at a giant portrait of an old lady’s ursine face, rendered in interlacing grey and black lines on a canvas otherwise blank. The only figurative in a room of Pollocks, de Koonings and Mirós, the portrait quietly startles.

   2004, David Mitchell, “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery”, in Cloud Atlas, London: Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton), →ISBN, page 428