If you use figurative language, you are not speaking literally but rather in a manner meant to produce a reaction.

Personification is a type of figurative language that gives human traits to nonliving objects.

When John talks in a figurative way and says he’s hungry enough to eat a horse, he is simply exaggerating his craving.

The figurative phrase “raining cats and dogs” describes a huge downpour and not an actual cascade of animals.

Because the little boy did not understand figurative speech, he truly believed he could knock his mother out with a feather.