Figurative Language
Figurative language means more than it says. Raining cats and dogs isn't about animals. It's about hard rain, and learning to hear the meaning behind the words is its own kind of reading.
Slang talks in pictures and the Mayor takes him at his word every time, and the gap between them is the whole lesson: a figure of speech means more than its words say.
Review & Recall, spaced review for the words you learn, opens soon.
A saying whose words don't add up to its meaning.
In a sentenceI studied all week, so the test was a piece of cake.
Play it in the Arcade.
Take it onto the floor with the live game. Free, with a new round every day.
No figurative game is on the floor yet, so start next door: every Word Detective case is a sentence with one mystery word, and cracking its meaning from the words around it's the same reading a figure of speech asks for. Slang Says, the figurative game, is coming.
Play Word Detective →Don't take a figure of speech at its word.
She has a green thumb.
Taken literally, this sounds like her thumb is the color green. It's not. That's the Mayor reading it the wrong way.
She has a green thumb.
It means she's very good at growing plants. A green thumb is an idiom for a gardener's skill, and Slang knew that all along.
A real vocabulary skill, Grades 3 through 8.
Figurative Language is one of the seven ways Grammaropolis teaches vocabulary, each mapped to a Common Core vocabulary strand. Every lesson is aligned grade by grade to Common Core, and the Wonderful Words workbooks are standards-cited across Common Core, Texas TEKS, Florida B.E.S.T., and New York Next Gen.
Teachers know these as word-learning strategies.
CCSS L.x.5.a and L.x.5.b (similes, metaphors, idioms, adages, and proverbs, beginning at grade 3 with literal vs nonliteral).
See it in the Standards Explorer →Other ways to know a word.
Back to Wonderful Words → Try the Sentence Factory → Wonderful Words workbook →