FIGURATIVE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Figurative

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/fˈɪgjərətɪv/ Listen

adjective

Figurative adj.

Representing by a figure, or by resemblance; typical; representative. "This, they will say, was figurative, and served, by God's appointment, but for a time, to shadow out the true glory of a more divine sanctity."

Used in a sense that is tropical, as a metaphor; not literal; applied to words and expressions.

Abounding in figures of speech; flowery; florid; as, a highly figurative description.

Relating to the representation of form or figure by drawing, carving, etc. See Figure, n., 2. "They belonged to a nation dedicated to the figurative arts, and they wrote for a public familiar with painted form."

Figurative counterpoint or Figurative descant. See under Figurate.

See images of 'Figurative'

Etymology of 'Figurative'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Figurative" Quotes from Famous Books

... vice-governatore, and completely puzzled Vito Viti. The grave mariners at the other table, too, thought it odd, for in no other tongue is the language of the sea as poetical, or figurative, as in the English; and the term of boot-top, as applied to a vessel, was Greek to them, as well as to the other listeners. They conversed among themselves on the subject, while their two superiors ...

— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the individual expositors, is the literal rendering of Scripture in passages, which the number and variety of images employed in different places to express one and the same verity, plainly mark out for figurative. And lastly, add to all these the strange—in all other writings unexampled—practice of bringing together into logical dependency detached sentences from books composed at the distance of centuries, nay, sometimes a millennium from each other, under different dispensations, ...

— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... "little bit of a poem to Susie," which she had asked him for so long ago! She received him therefore with open arms,—not literally, of course, which would have been a breach of duty and propriety, but in a figurative sense, which it is hoped no reader ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... w. v., to enclose, to fence: þing gehegan, to mark off the court, hold court. Here figurative: inf. sceal ... āna gehegan þing wið þyrse (shall alone decide ...

— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... demonstrate the folly of attempting to construct a system of ecclesiastical polity from such a highly-figurative portion of Scripture as the Apocalypse. In the angel of the Church some have believed they have discovered the moderator of a presbytery; others, the bishop of a diocese; and others, the minister of an Irvingite congregation. But the basis on which all such ...

— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

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