How To Use Figuratively In A Sentence
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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.
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This message, even when presented figuratively, uses extra linguistic referents to bring it in touch with the reality around us.
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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
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This Saturday you can avoid hundreds of unnecessary calories by skipping the pigskin (literally and figuratively) and saying yes to fitness.
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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.
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I have never used the term tar baby, have now placed it on my official “do not use” list along with all sorts of other terms, and generally try to be very sensitive to how slurs can figuratively cut and bleed even when used unintentionally.
Is Tony Snow, Press Secretary to the Pres. a Racist?
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Now it may be that a lunar outpost is valuable in its own right but if as many people say its primary purpose is as a stepping stone to Mars, I need to hear the argument about why the quickest/cheapest path to Mars passes through the moon (figuratively of course!). common sense
Moon Outpost or Bust - NASA Watch
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By the early 17th century, "cynosure" was also being used figuratively for anything or anyone that, like the North Star, was the focus of attention or observation.
Latest Articles
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In any event, we know that after drinking alcohol we often lose direction, literally and figuratively.
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The word 'Taino' means noble and in a twist of history the passage of the no-abortion legislation is figuratively a return to the island nation's namesake in its very aspect.
ProLifeBlogs
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A quick Latin lesson: flocci is derived from floccus, literally a tuft of wool and the source of English words like flocculate, but figuratively in Latin something trivial; pili is likewise the plural of pilus, a hair, which we have inherited in words like depilatory, but which in Latin could meant a whit, jot, trifle or generally something insignificant; nihili is from nihil, nothing, as in words like nihilism and annihilate; nauci just means worthless. source
The Floccinaucinihilipilificators
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Footwear is one aspect that can make a difference to the bearing of the person, literally and figuratively.
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This aspect is the representation of exemplariness, a representation designed to work always, although it sometimes does so literally, sometimes figuratively.
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It is not agreed whether the expression Jezebel, is to be understood literally or figuratively.
The Woman's Bible
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They have a taste - figuratively speaking - for excitement.
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A quick Latin lesson: flocci is derived from floccus, literally a tuft of wool and the source of English words like flocculate, but figuratively in Latin something trivial; pili is likewise the plural of pilus, a hair, which we have inherited in words like depilatory, but which in Latin could meant a whit, jot, trifle or generally something insignificant; nihili is from nihil, nothing, as in words like nihilism and annihilate; nauci just means worthless. source
The Floccinaucinihilipilificators
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Both literally and figuratively, they seemed squeezed into less space within the chamber.
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I know I'll spend time in Tennessee and mend some fences, literally and figuratively.
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It is not about the real recipe, which is literally locked up in a safe in Louisville and figuratively in a few executives' brains.
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` ` Leave Poll alone; she's in one of her trances! '' called a motherly, good-natured woman whose trunk stood next to Polly's, and whose business was to support a son and three daughters upon stalwart shoulders, both figuratively and literally.
Polly of the Circus
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Yes, the indicting magistrate is on the left, but according to the Economist the complainants are members of far right organizations with a vested interest in avoiding digging into the past (figuratively and literally).
The Volokh Conspiracy » Judge Baltazar Garzón Indicted
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The term mercury is used figuratively in such expressions as The mercurys rising to mean that the temperature is going up.
Mercury
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She is, figuratively speaking, holding a gun to his head.
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Subsequently the substantive "viaticum" figuratively meant the provision for the journey of life and finally by metaphor the provision for the passage out of this world into the next.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 15: Tournely-Zwirner
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The first was that the adjoining bungalow would not be overshadowed, either practically or figuratively, by the new house.
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Working both figuratively and abstractly, in bronze, clay, and various print mediums, he showed in New York at a number of galleries.
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Promoted to Headline (H2) on 9/5/08: Beating the Press-Literally yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = 'Beating the Press-Literally'; yahooBuzzArticleSummary = 'Article: only in America could a man who has called the corporatized, in-the-tank, mainstream media his "base" -- the media that made him its darling and hailed him for his supposed \'straight talk\' -- run against that very same media, bashing it figuratively while "peace officers" were doing so quite literally in the streets of St. Paul ... '
Beating the Press-Literally
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What is it that viewers are seeing—literally and figuratively—when they see the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, or the Lincoln Memorial on the screen?
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The good citizens were so enraged that they rose up in arms, figuratively at least, and founded the civic society.
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Despite the word's unwieldiness, then, I would propose that mimesis and anti-mimesis confront each other-optically, materially, figuratively-in Triptyque through a logic of ‘photo-scotomization.’
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Leave Poll alone; she's in one of her trances!" called a motherly, good-natured woman whose trunk stood next to Polly's, and whose business was to support a son and three daughters upon stalwart shoulders, both figuratively and literally.
Polly of the Circus
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Barack people spited Clinton (and her supporters) this year (to the extent of figuratively spitting on them) but expect the support of her people this year.
As Convention Begins, McCain Ad Features Hillary Supporter For McCain
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Bushmanship was the talent, akin to that of Aborigines, for finding one's way through the bush, relying only on natural signs; to be bushed was to lose one's way, perhaps figuratively as well as geographically.
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Some have suggested that Salem here is the Salim of John 3: 23; a few take the term figuratively as a title (see verse two) devoid of any geographical intent.
Our Man In Heaven: An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews
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Under cover of darkness our hero figuratively sneaks onto the White House lawn and retrieves those long lost medals, earned over that hellish 4-month span.
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But also costly figuratively, costly psychologically, because the new social lassitude associated with liberalism affronted cherished values.
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Or did the columnist mean to use the term figuratively as when individuals were "beaten up" by government hiring personnel who rejected their otherwise acceptable applications for employment because the resumes weren't ideologically pure enough?
LJWorld.com stories: News
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On the third point: the parabolical meaning is contained in the literal, since the words indicate something directly, and also something figuratively.
Nature and Grace: Selections from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas
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An Inner Critic can indeed roust you out of bed in the morning, get you on the treadmill (literally and figuratively) and spur you to finish that book or symphony or invention.
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During his literal captivity as a prisoner of war in Kentucky, he becomes figuratively captivated by her sophistries, which are explicitly coded as American.
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(Rom., viii, l); and why, according to James (i, 14 sqq.), concupiscence as such is really no sin; and it is apparent that St. Paul (Rom., vii, 17) is speaking only figuratively when he calls concupiscence sin, because it springs from sin and brings sin in its train.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6: Fathers of the Church-Gregory XI
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But a miser is the mirror image of a miner—what the miner digs up, the miser at least figuratively, and sometimes literally buries right back in the ground.
More Sex Is Safer Sex
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Another characteristic of the semantics of slang is the tendency to name things indirectly and figuratively, especially through metaphor, metonymy, and irony.
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She can help Annie develop habits and inclinations that offset her heedlessness or her lack of sympathy, such as the habit of cleaning up her messes literally and figuratively, of apologizing, and of righting the wrongs she has done.
Red Flags or Red Herrings?
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By figuratively occupying the position of the canonical American author, he denaturalizes associations of ‘whiteness’ with universal notions of literary authority and value.
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In Fugitive Days Ayers uses the word moorings on two occasions, both times figuratively but precisely, as with, “in time words lost their moorings and floated away.”
Deconstructing Obama
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In Hammett's novel, the Flitcraft episode disrupts the diegesis both literally, by inserting extraneous material into the ‘plot,’ and figuratively, by exposing the instability of all narratives.
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When he painted figuratively, he rarely painted a specific person—it was always a condition, a feeling, or a state.
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I decided to change tack - figuratively and literally - so I re-evaluated the kitchenalia that I hanker for and hoard.
The Independent - Frontpage RSS Feed
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The students are taught to swim with their heads, figuratively speaking.
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Martinned: Yes, the indicting magistrate is on the left, but according to the Economist the complainants are members of far right organizations with a vested interest in avoiding digging into the past (figuratively and literally).
The Volokh Conspiracy » Judge Baltazar Garzón Indicted
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An Inner Critic can indeed roust you out of bed in the morning, get you on the treadmill (literally and figuratively) and spur you to finish that book or symphony or invention.
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I'm all for hanging Bush by his toenails (figuratively of course) but for a member of Congress to explicitly elide the honorific is a breach of decorum.
Report: Obama Picks Labor Secretary
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Figuratively, one may imagine the radiation of such a spherical maser as resembling a little hedgehog.
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At one point in the book you describe Central Asia as "Massive, sometimes flat, sometimes mountainous, sometimes terrifically hot, other times frigidly cold, plagued with thousands of miles of penetrable borders, lacking an identifiable geographic center, and home to citizens know figuratively and sometimes literally to cut the colonialist's throat
the death sentence of several empires which attempted to hold onto it.
A Conversation with Tom Bissell
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It's the turn of a new century and Dummies Theatre is in the mood for reflection, literally and figuratively.
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Figuratively, acid applies to anything sour or biting; for example, an acid wit is sharp and unpleasant.
Acid
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These “seven nights,” however, are frequently interpreted, figuratively, to mean _seven years_, a rendering which often serves to relieve the shaman from a very embarrassing position.
The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 301-398
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Figuratively, the term adrenaline is used in speaking of a high state of excitement: When the race began, the adrenaline really started pumping.
Adrenaline
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But would Al Gore have entertained for an instant the idea of meekly reporting for this debate and walking past (even figuratively) nameplates that read "O'Reilly," "Hannity," "Hume," and "The FOX All-Stars"?
Frank Dwyer: To the Heroes Who Said No to FOX: Uh...You're Welcome
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With these lifts in place, no one coming to the district collectorate would need any lift any more - figuratively speaking.
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And only in America could a man who has called the corporatized, in-the-tank, mainstream media his "base" -- the media that made him its darling and hailed him for his supposed "straight talk" -- run against that very same media, bashing it figuratively while "peace officers" were doing so quite literally in the streets of St. Paul, in a manner unseen since the 60s and the Chicago days of Daley and the subsequent Nixonian "nattering nabobs of negativity" era.
Rory O'Connor: Beating the Press -- Literally
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Notice in this sentence the word is used figuratively a transferred sense.
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It's too easy to make woodgrain trim look overdone and tacky, but this company has got it nailed - figuratively speaking.
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I liked moving the paint around, and I painted figuratively as an undergraduate student.
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He recalled how the referee penalized the "good guy" for even the pettiest of infringements while the more entertaining guy i.e. the one with more punch literally and figuratively, was indulged.
Carol Smaldino: An Exercise for the Practice of Freedom
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Here we are cajoled into reading adjacent daubs figuratively, as melting body parts or mutant landscapes.
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Europe, with Germany literally and figuratively at its centre, is still at the start of a remarkable transformation.
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Europe, with Germany literally and figuratively at its centre, is still at the start of a remarkable transformation.
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And if you're the sort of person who resents bicycle messengers for their freewheeling lifestyle I mean "freewheeling" figuratively, since of course the fashionable ones use track bikes just take a moment to consider the alternatives from which they've managed to escape.
BSNYC Friday Fun Quiz!
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As I understand him, he felt silence to be sufficient where scorn was merited, and he did not sit at all, let alone on a fence, but rather strode, in a style famously like no other, forward to a frontier fenceless, literally and figuratively, beckoning the rest of us follow.
The Volokh Conspiracy » Our Own Randy Barnett Talks to Prof. Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit) About Whether ObamaCare Is Constitutional
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Geoffrey watched as the clouds began to figuratively darken the marquess ' face.
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A gantlet is a flogging ordeal, literally or figuratively.
Essential Guide to Business Style and Usage
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I was baffled by this conceptual-leaning gag at the time, but as I've learned more about contemporary art, I remain stubbornly excited about art's capacity to throw me -- albeit figuratively -- across the room, to pull me into a warm embrace, to send my mind deep into thought, or to set my nerves on edge.
Annie Buckley: On Seeing: An Internet Exhibition
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Or it may be taken figuratively, for his laying the country waste, and this very similitude is used in the history of it.
Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume IV (Isaiah to Malachi)
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Did she, in fact, see in the future taking some time off figuratively puffing on a corncob pipe and watching the sunset over the mountains from a porch swing?
Holly Cara Price: Amanda Palmer on Life, Art, Music, and Smashing Paradigms: So Much is Possible, and I Want to Do it All!
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Defeat at the hands I use the term figuratively of a box full of silicon and wires wastoo humiliating for Kasparov, a man who had never lost a multigame match against an individual opponent in his life!
I’m Working on That
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Europe, with Germany literally and figuratively at its centre, is still at the start of a remarkable transformation.
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Earthquakes occur frequently during their visit, reminding them that the ground beneath their feet is extremely shaky, both literally and figuratively.
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After half an hour in a cubicle, I'm ready to climb the walls (figuratively), but it takes days of working up on the scaffold before things grow tiresome.
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The 'murex' contains a dye of miraculous beauty; and this once extracted and bottled, Hobbs, Nobbs, and Co. may trade in it and feast; but the poet who (figuratively) brought the murex to land, and created its value, may, as Keats probably did, eat porridge all his life.
A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)
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It pays, literally and figuratively, to quit in the right way, because your reputation is at stake, if nothing else," says Priscilla Claman, president of Career Strategies, a Boston consulting firm.
USATODAY.com - Quitting is one of your most important performances
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But we neutrals will be ushered away (figuratively, I hope), leaving the stage set for a thumping reaffirmation of the view that Hadrian's Wall means far more than a few stones on a hill.
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In other words, figuratively and literally, they stop short of an interior that is like the Asian exterior where Felipe and his Mexican friend could take off their uniforms and play wildly without being scofflaws or enemies.
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The term figuratively has reference to the Spanish conquest of the indigenous Indians of Mexico and the resulting mestizaje or the mixed racial and ethnic identity of indigenous, European and African heritage unique to the Americas.
Randall Amster: Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies and, Along With it, Reason and Justice
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She merged her body with nature, often figuratively, by creating silhouettes of her body out of such materials as flowers, rocks, blood, twigs, or earth.
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It appears they were bedfellows both figuratively and literally.
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The key to ambiguity is to fight that urge and leave a few of the pieces of the puzzle out, or figuratively turn them 90 degrees.
Food For Thought
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Figuratively, a fetish is any object that arouses excessive devotion: Lucille made a fetish of her Porsche.
Fetish
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Note 51: The custom of all the gentlemen of the house was to betake themselves straightway after supper to my lady Duchess; where, among the other pleasant pastimes and music and dancing that continually were practised, sometimes neat questions were proposed, sometimes ingenious games were devised at the choice of one or another, in which under various disguises the company disclosed their thoughts figuratively to whom they liked best.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro
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Because the outerborough neighborhoods do not occupy any real space in outsiders' minds as significant places, they are like Willow Springs in that they are, at least figuratively, unmapped.
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Charlie, on the other hand, painted a complete abstract with no attempt to portray anything figuratively.
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In Chicago, he had already begun to work figuratively and in the relatively "minor" medium of gouache on paper or board.
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Apparently drawing on Caribbean folklore to dramatise the concepts of the minor cards, hers was the first deck to actually represent the minor arcana figuratively.
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figuratively speaking,...
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I'm leaving the subject broad, hoping we can veer off down all kinds of different paths, figuratively and literally.
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Thus, we hang artists in galleries and child pornographers in the public square (figuratively).
The Volokh Conspiracy » Third Circuit Upholds Injunction of Threatened “Sexting” Prosecution
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Figuratively speaking, the cur is a cross between a
Salem-News.com
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At their very core—or lack of a core, both really and figuratively—Picasso's ceramics are three-dimensional repudiations of a certain strain of modernism.
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The curators have figuratively thrown open the doors to the tomb, let in the light, and shaken out clouds of ancient dust.
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To apply the term figuratively to the forces inherent in national character savoured of a literary indecorum.
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 2
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Although there has been some buzz of late about young abstract painters in Los Angeles, much of the truly innovative new work has been figuratively based.
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Birds flock, literally and figuratively, to these 40 acres of old forest and gentle pasture overlooking the mighty Hudson River.
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His film nails the primal horror of not knowing what's beneath the surface—literally and figuratively.
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His earlier description of Ireland, "the old sow that eats her farrow," is acted out in the Circe's disorderly house, where men are figuratively turned into swine.
James Joyce
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We need every inch of Betty White to be covered in the news – both literally and figuratively – before she can outplace all the Typical Tabloid Trash and we can call Betty “over”-anything other than overage.
Betty White to pose with young studs and wild animals for 2011 calendar | EW.com