This document provides examples and definitions of different types of figurative language including personification, simile, and metaphor. It includes examples of each with short passages demonstrating their use. Key points covered include: - Definitions of personification, simile, and metaphor - Examples of each type with comparisons like "as black as coal" for simile and giving human traits to objects for personification - Exercises asking the reader to create their own examples of each type of figurative language

1. Figurative
Language

2. Personification
Simile Metaphor
Imagery
Aural imagery
•Alliteration Symbol
•Assonance
•Onomatopoeia

3. Personification
Simile Metaphor
Imagery
Aural imagery
•Alliteration Symbol
•Assonance
•Onomatopoeia

4. Simile – comparison using the
words ‘like’ or ‘as’

6. Similes
As black as... coal
As light as a... feather
As clean as a... whistle
As quick as a... flash
As hungry as a... wolf
As proud as a... peacock
As sharp as a... needle
As heavy as... lead
Like a bull in a.. China shop

8. Be creative in your
choice of
comparison

9. Being stood up is like being the last fruit on the tree,
Left to wither through the winter
Feeling angry is like carrying a volcano in the pit
of your stomach that threatens to erupt at any moment
The leaves fell from the tree like a thousand paratroopers
Leaping into battle behind enemy lines
The class was as boring as counting the perforations in
a bag of PG tips!

10. Your Turn
As black as...
As light as a...
As clean as a...
As hungry as a...
As proud as a...
As heavy as...

11. A Simile poem
By
Stanley Cook

12. Like the white curls from a gigantic beard
Drifting across the barber’s shop floor
In the breeze from the open door;
Like the broken parts of the ice floe
Afloat on the blue of the ocean,
Drifting southward from the Pole;
Like a heavily laden treasure fleet
In a light wind on the calm sea,
Hardly moving with all sails set;
Like suds of foam from the waterfall
That lathers the rocks at its foot,
Gliding over a tranquil pool;
Like wool from a fleece,
Like smoke from a fire,
Like islands in the sky.

13. Your Turn

14. Like the white curls from a gigantic beard
Drifting across the barber’s shop floor
In the breeze from the open door;
Like the broken parts of the ice floe
Afloat on the blue of the ocean,
Drifting southward from the Pole;
Like a heavily laden treasure fleet
In a light wind on the calm sea,
Hardly moving with all sails set;
Like suds of foam from the waterfall
That lathers the rocks at its foot,
Gliding over a tranquil pool;
Like wool from a fleece,
Like smoke from a fire,
Like islands in the sky.

15. Name the Title - D.H. Lawrence
Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light,
And falling back
Wings like bits of umbrella
Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old
rags
And grinning in their sleep

17. Swallows with spools of dark thread sewing
the shadows together

18. Personification
Simile Metaphor
Imagery
Aural imagery
•Alliteration Symbol
•Assonance
•Onomatopoeia

19. Metaphor – direct comparison
without using the words
‘like’ or ‘as’

21. What season are you?

22. What animal are you ?

23. Musical instrument?

24. Piece of Furniture?

25. Who am I?
An owl staring into the darkness,
A star fruit, bursting with juice.
A dramatic orchestral movement
And the sky just after a storm.
A swirling black cloak
And a whispered secret.

28. How is a wave like a
mountain?

29. Hokusai – ‘The Wave’

30. How is a skater like
the earth in its orbit?

31. Ted Hughes
With arms swinging, a tremendous skater
On the flimsy ice of space,
The earth leans into its curve -

32. Norman Nicholson
And chiselled clear on stone
A spider-web of shell,
The thumb print of the sea.

33. May Swenson
On silent hinges
Open-folds her wings
Applauding hands.

34. Phoebe Hesketh
Giraffe-tall, gormless somehow,
Heads hanging
Over the next garden.

35. Gareth Owen
Boredom
Is
Clouds
Black as old slate
Chucking rain straight
On our Housing Estate
All grey
Day long.

36. Craig Raine
There are men
On the roof of the church
Playing patience,
Tile after tile,

37. Your Turn
Use a metaphor to describe one of
the following as a phrase or line:
•London Underground
•An electricity pylon
•A rhinoceros
•A hive of bees
•Fog

38. Lord Alfred Tennyson
The Eagle
HE clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

39. metaphor metaphor
HE clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
?
simile

40. Personification
Simile Metaphor
Imagery
Aural imagery
•Alliteration Symbol
•Assonance
•Onomatopoeia

41. Personification – giving human
qualities to objects & animals

43. The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice

44. The angry clouds marched across the sky.
The lonely train whistle cried out in the night.
The hungry chainsaw growled loudly.
The stubborn dense fog swallowed us.
The evening stars winked at me from the sky.

45. Which is the
grumpiest?

46. Who is in charge?

47. Which is the wisest?

48. He who owns the whistle, rules the world
By Roger McGough
January wind and the sun
Playing truant again.
Rain beginning to scratch
Its fingernails across
The blackboard sky
In the playground
Kids divebomb, corner
At Silverstone or execute
Traitors. Armed
With my Acme Thunderer
I step outside,
Take a deep breath
And bring the world
To a standstill.

49. The Moon
By Percy Shelley
AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

50. The story of a 10
pence piece

51. Life according to a
mirror

52. Your Turn
Use personification to bring one of
the following to life:
•A dentist’s chair
•An ATM machine
•An airport metal detector
•A vending machine
•A defibrillator