How to Use figurative in a Sentence

figurative

adjective
Definition of figurativenext
Synonyms for figurativenext
  • Fleck has enforced this figurative bubble in his own signature way.
    — Megan Ryan, Star Tribune, 7 Aug. 2020
  • This whole album is full of great figurative language, actually, and this song is a very sing-a-long-able example of that.
    — oregonlive, 7 Aug. 2020
  • That figurative baby—whose new board now includes Mr. Icahn’s deputies—has found a way to snatch some of that candy back.
    — Jinjoo Lee, WSJ, 10 July 2020
  • Whether literal or figurative, something valuable is shown.
    — USA TODAY, 17 Oct. 2024
  • Narrowing the Nazca field The team chose to focus on the smaller and more figurative of the two types of symbols discovered in the desert.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 27 Sep. 2024
  • Bacon is considered one of London’s top figurative painters of the 20th century.
    — Kelly Crow, WSJ, 30 June 2020
  • Both movies consider the possibility of personal growth for young men in a kind of emotional stasis, caught up in hard-to-escape loops, whether figurative or literal.
    — Brian Lowry, CNN, 10 July 2020
  • Notre Dame threw the first figurative punch of the game.
    — The New York Times, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2023
  • The figurative painter Chaz Guest has fans in high places.
    — New York Times, 2 Feb. 2022
  • The creator of the art is detached from it the moment the figurative pen lid clicks shut.
    — Howard Murphy, Rolling Stone, 20 Oct. 2023
  • The word took on a more figurative sense in the 19th century.
    — Suzannah Showler, WIRED, 3 Oct. 2023
  • But at the start of The Rings of Power, most of the Elvish elite is intent on placing its figurative head in the proverbial sand.
    — Daniel Bessner, The New Republic, 7 Sep. 2022
  • Fields is in a figurative room where his only peer is Lawrence, whom the Tigers lost for two weeks because of the virus.
    — Stephen Means, cleveland, 12 Nov. 2020
  • The first step involves looking in the mirror, in the figurative sense.
    — Andrew Weinberg, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2021
  • One of the paintings that graced Vidal’s study was a figurative work by his friend Rudolf Nureyev.
    — Christopher Bollen, Town & Country, 8 June 2022
  • But after four years cooped up in a monastery, Mary runs away and heads straight for (figurative) sin city.
    — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 22 Sep. 2023
  • So, in a figurative sense, the aquarium is killing two birds with one stone.
    — Christine Condon, baltimoresun.com, 22 Feb. 2022
  • At a time when the world seems topsy-turvy, the moon is a literal and figurative rock.
    — Nicole Clausing, Sunset Magazine, 24 Sep. 2020
  • That got a figurative shot in the arm this week with some federal help.
    — Ike Morgan | Imorgan@al.com, al, 11 Dec. 2020
  • In his first year on the job, the figurative script often ended up in tatters.
    — Nathan Ruiz, baltimoresun.com, 16 Aug. 2020
  • With the book, Canales flung open a door and let people peer into the figurative skeletons in his closet.
    — Scott Fowler, Charlotte Observer, 30 Jan. 2024
  • Pegues is more concerned with his team’s lack of figurative fight.
    — Brett Dawson, The Courier-Journal, 2 Mar. 2022
  • Sometimes the messaging is more figurative, as in the climate-change metaphors of the Frozen franchise or Game of Thrones.
    — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 20 Apr. 2021
  • The results for 2020 are all over the figurative as well as literal map.
    — John Pfaff, The New Republic, 21 June 2021
  • The venture, though, which was financed through a loan, came at a steep cost, in literal and figurative terms.
    — Gary Baum, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 Sep. 2023
  • The figurative sense in which the Navy is at sea is more important and more dangerous.
    — Seth Cropsey, WSJ, 27 Apr. 2021
  • Teddy Roosevelt is astride Central Park West one day and in the (figurative) basement the next.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 13 Mar. 2022
  • And between him and the finish line were all kinds of bumps, both figurative and literal.
    — Julie Jag, The Salt Lake Tribune, 22 Jan. 2022
  • And the figurative political tent the Republicans are building feels more and more like a Big Top with each passing day.
    — Brea Baker, refinery29.com, 30 Aug. 2024
  • Romero, 83, dabbles in figurative drawings of the human form, using cultural objects like nopales or automobiles to make social commentary.
    — Sarah Quiñones Wolfson, Los Angeles Times, 9 Aug. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'figurative.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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