FIGURATIVE MEANING

     The term figurative is used to describe words or sets of words whose meaning is non-literal and imaginative.

For example: 

1. 'I could eat a horse' means 'I'm extremely hungry'.

2. 'they received a flood of letters' means 'they received a lot of letters all at once'.

3. 'he can swim like a fish' means 'he can swim very well'.

     In order to find the meaning of a figurative phrase in a dictionary, decide which word is key and look for this in the dictionary. For example, 'eat' is key in the first example above. 

Exercise 

1. I ate so much I thought I was going to burst.

●Literal meaning of 'burst' is 'explode like a balloon'.

●Figurative meaning of 'burst' is 'I felt extremely full'

     In this exercise you can guess the figurative meaning of 'burst' here by relating the denotation to the context. For example, 'burst' means 'explode because something is very full, like a balloon'. Here it is describing the feeling of being about to explode because you have eaten a lot. 😊