"figure of speech" meaning in English

See figure of speech in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Audio: en-au-figure of speech.ogg [Australia] Forms: figure of speech
Head templates: {{expression}} [POS TABLE]
  1. A figure of speech is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect.
    Sense id: simple-figure_of_speech-en-phrase-pAwXfV61
     
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "figure of speech",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Expression"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
      "name": "expression"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "A figure of speech is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect."
      ],
      "id": "simple-figure_of_speech-en-phrase-pAwXfV61",
      "raw_tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-figure of speech.ogg",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Audio"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "figure of speech"
}

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "figure of speech",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Expression"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
      "name": "expression"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "A figure of speech is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-figure of speech.ogg",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Audio"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "figure of speech"
}

Download raw JSONL data for figure of speech meaning in English (0.5kB)

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-05-21 from the simplewiktionary dump dated 2025-05-20 using wiktextract (89ebc88 and e74c913). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.