[ UK /fˈɪɡjʊɹˌe‍ɪtɪv/ ]
[ US /ˈfɪɡjɝətɪv/ ]
ADJECTIVE
  1. (used of the meanings of words or text) not literal; using figures of speech
    figurative language
  2. consisting of or forming human or animal figures
    a figural design
    the figurative art of the humanistic tradition

How To Use figurative In A Sentence

  • I left figurative art because I was bored of it. Times, Sunday Times
  • His escape meant that he had to be figuratively executed, with the result that the people, ideas, and culture associated with him were outlawed and destroyed in his stead.
  • This message, even when presented figuratively, uses extra linguistic referents to bring it in touch with the reality around us.
  • The specter of death lingers over the entire film, both figuratively with Tommy Lee Jones as a corporate "axeman" sent to close down the show after one last performance and literally, in the form of Virginia Madsen's angel in a white trenchcoat, a noirish avatar of death who Altman credits as the "Dangerous Woman" even though she's given an actual name in the film. Archive 2008-11-01
  • This Saturday you can avoid hundreds of unnecessary calories by skipping the pigskin (literally and figuratively) and saying yes to fitness.
  • The goal of her thoughtful analysis is to reincorporate the father back into the family picture or narrative, a narrative from which he has been excluded both figuratively and literally by the mother.
  • In some cases where the word has extensive normal usages, as in the case of 'lux' this is true of the English 'light' as well, depending on how one takes the word the same sentence can be treated as figurative or literal and mean basically the same thing. Archive 2005-05-01
  • Particularly when used in a figurative sense to refer to having heard something unpleasant.
  • Within this framework, much of the First Testament has functioned in a typological or prefigurative manner, or as a shadow-like version of the truth God revealed in the gospel.
  • Painted in 1953, it dates from the period during which Barns-Graham, originally a figurative painter, was reconciling hard-edged geometrical abstraction with a love of landscape.
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