Shari

Ferrer

Color

Your

Words

With

Figurative

Language

Color

Your Words

With

Figurative Language

By Shari Ferrer

Copyright 2011 by Shari Ferrer

All rights reserved

To my children,

Katie, Sarah and Christopher,

whose summer fun was ruined

by Mommy’s homework,

and to my husband,

Jorge,

who has loved me through 23 years,

homework and all

Table of Contents

Putting Lipstick on a Pig: Making the Case for Figurative Language … 1

Chapter 1: Simile …………………………………………………… …… 3

Chapter 2: Metaphor ……………………………………………………... 8

Chapter 3: Personification ………………………………………………… 11

Chapter 4: Idiom………………………………………………………..… 14

Chapter 5: Hyperbole………………….…………………………………. 16

Sum and Substance: Back to the Lipstick and the Pig…………….….… 18

Glossary…………………………………………….……………………… 19

Photo and Illustration Credits………………..……………………………. 20

1

Putting Lipstick on a Pig:

Making the Case for Figurative Language

It’s fun. It’s just plain fun. Using figurative language is like giving homely sentences an

extreme makeover. You can take a boring, beige wallflower of a sentence and dress it up in

fetching colors. Suddenly, you have a sentence that turns heads, shimmies across the dance floor

and flirts shamelessly. Your sentence is now the life of the party.

The paragraph you just read contains two types of figurative language, simile and

personification. It is also a whole lot more interesting than, “Figurative language adds interest.”

We took that basic idea and made it over. That’s what figurative language does. It conveys your

ideas with flair. It makes you sound even smarter than you are. It gives your sentences pizzazz. A

world without figurative language is like champagne without bubbles: flat and dull.

You have no doubt realized by now that figurative language is the polar opposite of

literal language. Figurative language sparks the imagination by taking words beyond their literal

meaning. Literal language is just about the facts. Figurative language gives those facts emphasis

and personality, puts the figurative lipstick on the pig.

2

Knowing what figurative language is and how it functions in writing will help you

understand the deeper meanings of the words you read and allow you to add spice and color to

the words you write. Think of this book as your personal tour guide to the vivid world of

figurative language. Together, we will visit five of the most common types: simile, metaphor,

personification, idiom and hyperbole.

3

Chapter 1

Simile

A simile is a comparison of two unrelated things using “like” or “as.” A simile says two

otherwise dissimilar things are similar in some respect. Let’s look at an example.

The man’s eyes are like pools of dark chocolate.

Remember, figurative speech goes beyond literal meaning. The writer is trying to express

an idea through the comparison of two things, in this case, eyes and chocolate. The writer is

highlighting a trait that is shared by these two seemingly unrelated things. They are both brown.

Sure, the writer could have just said, “The man’s eyes are brown.” But would you rather have

brown eyes or dark chocolate eyes?

Let’s try another simile.

Sarah looked as worn out as an old shoe.

What is the meaning behind this sentence? Sarah’s

appearance is being compared to an old shoe. Both look

worn out. An old, worn-out shoe can be identified by its scuff marks, its worn tread, its frayed

seams. Worn-out Sarah might be identified by her disheveled clothes and her tousled hair. Both

Sarah and the shoe have seen better days.

Let’s see if our new understanding of simile can help us make sense of classic literature.

Death lies on her like an untimely frost

Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

Even if you’ve never before read these immortal lines in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and

Juliet, you understand that just as an untimely frost comes before its season, Juliet’s death also

arrives too soon. If the line had simply said that she died young, Shakespeare’s name may

4

have died with him. We know Shakespeare’s name because he knew how to employ simile to

capture an audience. The simile proved so powerful that it has outlived its author by nearly 400

years.

Now let’s try constructing our own similes. Let’s start by describing something you know

well, such as your home. Then think of 4 adjectives that describe your home. For example:

Yellow Small

My home is…

Welcoming Crowded

5

So you now have four basic sentences about your home.

My home is yellow.

My home is small.

My home is welcoming.

My home is crowded.

That’s a start, but those are literal, factual sentences. They are still beige sentences. Let’s dress

them up a little, add a bit of color. Think of two nouns or noun phrases you associate with each

adjective. Now you have something that looks like this:

6

Banana shoebox

School bus tent

Yellow Small

My home is…

Welcoming Crowded

a Walmart Miami street at

greeter rush hour

Hot cocoa on a a store on

winter day Christmas Eve

7

Add “like” or “as” to complete the comparisons, and you have some dressed-up sentences

that are ready to party.

My home is as yellow as a banana.

My home is yellow like a school bus.

My home is as small as a shoebox.

My home is small like a tent.

My home is as welcoming a Walmart greeter.

My home is welcoming like hot cocoa on a winter day.

My home is as crowded as a store on Christmas Eve.

My home is crowded like a Miami street at rush hour.

So, next time you’re writing an essay, an email or a love letter, try your hand at simile.

It’s as easy as falling out of bed.

8

Chapter 2

Metaphor

Metaphor is a close cousin of simile. This form of figurative language also compares two

unlike things, but does so more directly than simile does. Metaphors are more straightforward

and brazen than similes. While similes make polite comparisons using “like” and “as,”

metaphors drop all pretense and just call names. If a metaphor thinks Johnny eats like a pig, it

will come straight out and call him a pig.

Johnny is a pig at the dinner table.

As you can see, in a metaphor, one thing is said to actually be another thing.

Lucy’s lawn was a carpet of green velvet.

Now, this does not mean that Lucy went loony and had yards and yards of green velvet carpet

installed in her front yard. Remember, literal meaning takes a vacation when you use figurative

language. It simply means that Lucy’s grass was soft and green.

9

Similes can often be transformed into metaphors by altering their structure. To see how

this works, let’s revisit a couple of the similes we constructed about our yellow house.

Simile: My home is as yellow as a banana.

Metaphor: My home is the yellow banana on the corner.

Simile: My home is as small as a shoebox.

Metaphor: My home is the shoebox with the blue door.

Now that we know what metaphors are, let’s check in once more with the Bard of Avon,

William Shakespeare, to see how he employed them. Again, we peek in on those love-struck

teenagers in Romeo and Juliet.

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

Wow. Romeo compares the woman of his dreams to the most luminous object in our sky.

Smooth move. No wonder Juliet was willing to forsake her family for him. Shakespeare really

knew how to use metaphors to help Romeo turn on the charm.

Daphne du Maurier used metaphor to very different effect in her gothic novel, Rebecca.

Her curiosity was a disease, almost a mania.

The effect here is dark and foreboding. It looks like Mrs. Van Hopper’s very sanity is at risk.

Of course, a tour of great metaphors in literature must not overlook literary giant Theodor

“Dr. Seuss” Geisel. When his classic children’s story How the Grinch Stole Christmas was made

10

into an animated TV special, he wrote the lyrics to one of the songs. See if you can spot the

metaphors in this excerpt from “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

You really are a heel.

You're as cuddly as a cactus,

You're as charming as an eel.

Mr. Grinch.

You're a bad banana

With a greasy black peel.

You're a monster, Mr. Grinch.

Your heart's an empty hole.

Your brain is full of spiders,

You've got garlic in your soul.

Yeesh! Talk about evocative. Those lyrics paint a picture of someone you’d really rather

not meet. Did you catch some of the metaphors? (You’re a bad banana. Your brain is full of

spiders.) Did you see any of the similes? (You’re as cuddly as a cactus.)

Metaphor is the blunt, outspoken relative in the figurative language family. It pulls no

punches. Now that you’ve been introduced, see how you can adopt some metaphoric ways of

your own.

11

Chapter 3

Personification

Personification involves attributing human traits to animals, inanimate objects or ideas.

Throughout this book, we have encountered personification: sentences that dance, metaphors that

call names and ideas that take vacations. Personification animates the world and brings writing to

life. It allows trees, rocks, furniture and even abstract concepts to speak, think, feel and interact

with the world.

The raging river laughed at his tiny rowboat.

As if to sound an alarm, the stairs groaned beneath the burglar’s feet.

As they huddled by the fire, the storm growled and banged on the windows.

To use personification, you need to look at the world in a highly imaginative way, the

way you did as a very young child, when nothing seemed beyond the realm of possibility. It is

this childlike imagination that the art of personification taps into. Personification looks at

everything as having the ability to act, react, and interact.

His long-forgotten past clawed its way into the present and demanded to be

fed.

Death heard their pleas for mercy and that night passed them by.

Now that we have a feel for what personification does, let’s see how various authors have

used it to bring life to their work. John Steinbeck, in his short story “Flight,” gives buildings the

ability to move.

The farm buildings huddled like the clinging aphids on the mountain skirts,

crouched low to the ground as though the wind might blow them into the sea.

12

Obviously, the houses could not have crouched or huddled or moved at all. Steinbeck,

however, effectively uses personification to colorfully communicate that the single-story farm

buildings were built at the base of a mountain.

Louis Phillips uses personification to humorous effect in “A Poem on the Wrong Track.”

In this case, Phillips portrays a train as having a head cold.

One day last winter,

A train caught a cold.

It’s a true story,

Or so I’m told.

For one entire month

It stood in the rain,

Coughing and sneezing,

An achoo, an achoo, an achoo choo train.

Here, the author is not trying to communicate a deeper meaning. Rather, the purpose is a play on

words for the purpose of pure silliness.

Achoo!

13

Shel Silverstein had silliness in mind, too, when he used personification in his poem

“Arrows.”

I shot an arrow toward the sky,

It hit a white cloud floating by.

The cloud fell dying to the shore,

I don’t shoot arrows anymore.

The poem is humorous because we instinctively understand that arrows cannot strike clouds and

that clouds cannot fall to earth or die. It is precisely this understanding that makes Silverstein’s

word-picture of an arrow protruding from a gasping cloud so preposterously funny.

Now that you are acquainted with personification, look around. Think about what your

toaster has to say, how your car feels, what the sidewalk might do on a frosty morning. Use your

imagination to make your writing sing.

14

Chapter 4

Idiom

An idiom is a figurative expression that is standardized and widely used within a given

language. Like all figurative language, it has meaning beyond the individual words. These word-

pictures are often deeply rooted in culture and are specific to a language or a dialect. Because of

this, idioms usually do not translate well between

languages. For example, to say in English that someone

is “in a pickle” means that person is in a quandary or in

a difficult situation. If you were to translate that phrase

into, say, Spanish, your listener would seriously

question your sanity.

Idioms, then, are to the speakers of a given language what the secret handshake is to the

neighborhood tree house club. If you aren’t a member, you don’t understand it. If you are a

member, you know the idiom so well that you don’t even need its meaning explained to you.

Because of this, idioms are often used in casual speech as shorthand to convey meaning. Though

the meaning behind an idiom may be well known to the users, the origin of the phrase may not

be obvious. Idiomatic expressions are so entrenched within a culture that users are often unaware

of the expression’s origin. To say that someone “kicked the bucket,” for example, means that

person died. How did these two mismatched concepts become joined at the hip? Suffice it to say

that the origin of the phrase is too gruesome to repeat here. All we really need to know is the

meaning behind the idiom.

15

Here is a very small sampling of some of the idioms that decorate the English language,

along with their underlying meanings.

A chip on your shoulder: holding a grudge

A dime a dozen: something that is common and easy to find

Back to square one: to start all over

Can’t cut the mustard: someone can’t meet standards or do adequate work

Dry run: a rehearsal

Go for broke: to risk everything

He lost his head: overwhelmingly angry

Head over heels: very excited or in love

Lend an ear: to listen to someone

New York minute: something that happens quickly

On pins and needles: nervous or anxious

Pulling your leg: tricking someone

Raining cats and dogs: raining very hard

Smell a rat: to sense that something is wrong or that someone is lying

Tie the knot: to get married

Under the weather: feeling sick

When pigs fly: something that will never happen

16

Chapter 5

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is purposeful and obvious exaggeration used for effect or emphasis. The

exaggeration is often so extreme as to be physically impossible. Hyperbole does not so much lie

as it does magnify the truth. Hyperbole overstates and embellishes. Hyperbole enlarges, expands

and intensifies. Aw, heck, hyperbole does lie, but in a way so extravagant and entertaining that

no one has ever been in danger of taking it seriously. Kind of like Uncle Charlie’s fish tales.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Despite Joan’s attempts to quiet Rover, the

dog barked its head off.

I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse.

If she calls my name, I will die

embarrassment.

Of course, Rover kept his head, no one ate the horse, and

embarrassment never killed anybody as far as we know. Think of hyperbole as the Olympic

Games of exaggeration. The purpose of hyperbole is to outshine, outman and outgun all other

superlatives. Hyperbole would never tell you that your great aunt Gertrude is old. Hyperbole

would point out that she’s old enough to have witnessed the Big Bang. Hyperbole has never

waited in a long line. Hyperbole has been standing in line since lines were invented. Hyperbole

never hooks a fish. Hyperbole hooks a fish so big it eats the boat.

17

You see, hyperbole says everything you want to say. It just says it better. Now, let’s take

a look at a few authors who let hyperbole do the talking. We’ll start with Mark Twain, master of

hyperbole. He once said of the mighty Mississippi:

I have seen this river so wide it had only one bank.

Now, that’s obviously impossible. But it gets Twain’s point across, doesn’t it?

The opening lines of the American folktale “Babe the Blue Ox” are a fantastic study of

hyperbole’s ridiculous heights.

Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all

the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so

frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had

to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.

Hyperbole isn’t always the class clown. It has its serious side, too, as illustrated in this

excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Concord Hymn.”

Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world.

See? Hyperbole is the most amazing invention the world has ever seen!

18

Sum and Substance

Back to the Lipstick and the Pig

We’ve completed our tour of the colorful land of figurative language. We have examined

five types of figurative language and how you can use them to tint your writing with hues of

meaning. Let’s see how many ways we learned to put lipstick on that pig.

Simile She looks like a pig wearing lipstick.

Metaphor She’s a lipstick-wearing pig.

Personification The pig wore her coat of mud with pride. She couldn’t have felt any

prettier if she were wearing lipstick.

Idiom She said she’ll wear purple lipstick when pigs fly.

Hyperbole She wore so much lipstick, even the pigs laughed at her.

That’s a great start. There are many more forms of figurative language - onomatopoeia,

alliteration, puns, synecdoche, imagery, symbolism - but they are for another book. For now, we

hope you’re inspired to dive into the ocean of figurative language and explore its depths.

19

Glossary

Hyperbole - purposeful and obvious exaggeration used for

effect or emphasis. The exaggeration is often so extreme as

to be physically impossible.

Idiom - a figurative expression that is standardized and widely used within a

given language; often deeply rooted in culture and specific to a language or a

dialect.

Metaphor - compares two unlike things directly; one thing is said to

actually be another thing.

Personification - involves attributing human traits to animals,

inanimate objects or ideas.

Simile - a comparison of two unrelated things using “like” or “as.”

Achoo!

20

Photo and Illustration Credits

Cover

Design: Shari Ferrer

Paint splatter photo:

http://splash-

b.lisdtv.lubbockisd.org/modules/groups/integrated_home.phtml?&gid=2101760&sessionid=2f2a

fd3ed80f70e18d07c305de7c44cd

Dedication Page

Handprints:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickeyd600/3666542556/

Table of Contents

Paint bucket:

http://www.graphicsfactory.com/cgi-

bin/art/search.cgi?query=paint&catid=1047&mh=&image_type=

Page 1

Pig illustration:

http://www.mystockvectors.com/search.php?search=frown&match_type=all&gid_search=&gid=

&sgid=&startat=45&perpage=15&page_num=4

Lipstick clip art:

http://www.graphicsfactory.com/search/lipstick_P1.html

Page 2

Pig photo:

http://stopandsmellthecoffee.wordpress.com/

Page 3

Sneaker photo:

http://www.hometowninvasion.com/photo/oklahoma/osiris-d3-2003

Page 4

Cluster graph: created by Shari Ferrer

Page 5

House illustration:

http://www.ourmall.sg/category.php?id=1&page=76

Page 6

Cluster graph: created by Shari Ferrer

21

Page 7

Banana house illustration:

http://mlti.worthonethousand.com/entries/525613/banana-house

Page 8

Pig illustration:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eat-Like-A-Pig-Be-Proud/118686578167297

Page 9

Grass carpet photo:

http://stopthecap.com/2009/10/02/special-report-astroturf-overload-broadband-for-america-one-

giant-industry-front-group/

Page 10

Spiders on brain photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kimberlyry/5601732364/

Page 12

Train clip art:

http://www.graphicsfactory.com/search/train_P1.html

Page 13

Sun and cloud clip art:

http://www.graphicsfactory.com/Clip_Art/Cartoon/2643-Royalty-Free-Sun-Behind-

Cloud_379848.html

Person shooting arrow clip art:

http://www.graphicsfactory.com/Clip_Art/Sports/archer_167823.html

Page 14

Person in pickle costume photo:

http://hipstercrite.blogspot.com/2010/07/furdy.html

Page 15

Raining cats and dogs illustration:

http://londonschoolofenglish.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/raining-cats-and-dogs/

Page 16

Barking dog:

http://www.smartstunblog.com/tag/electronic-barking-dog-alarm/

Fishing illustration:

http://boatsclipart-a.blogspot.com/

22

Page 17

Shot heard round the world illustration:

http://www.postdiluvian.org/~gilly/Schoolhouse_Rock/HTML/history/shot.html

Page 18

Lipstick pig illustration:

http://notmytribe.com/date/2008/09/page/2

Page 19:

Barking dog:

http://www.smartstunblog.com/tag/electronic-barking-dog-alarm/

Raining cats and dogs illustration:

http://londonschoolofenglish.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/raining-cats-and-dogs/

Pig illustration:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eat-Like-A-Pig-Be-Proud/118686578167297

Train clip art:

http://www.graphicsfactory.com/search/train_P1.html

Banana house illustration:

http://mlti.worthonethousand.com/entries/525613/banana-house

23