figure of speech

“It was now a mere figure of speech to call them so, though, in their home-talk, loving simplicity, they would neither have been ashamed nor annoyed at the epithet – these two tall lads, who in the dusk looked as man-like as their father.”

John Halifax, Gentleman

“This involves a figure of speech but does not yet, as K.W. contends, establish the meaning of "tribe" for”

Exposition of Genesis: Volume 1

“Off the wall, hyphenated as above when used as a compound modifier of the word it precedes, is a figure of speech that shows staying power.”

Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time

“The fresh figure of speech racing through the lingo of the edge-cutting calls up the image of a runner straining ahead, the tilt of the body throwing weight forward to aid acceleration.”

Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time

“Mostly it was just a figure of speech but now and then a child was beaten to death for his sneakers, a baby smothered because it cried,”

Firestorm

“Even so eminent an economist as Irving Fisher of Yale was lulled by the superficial evidences of prosperity into announcing that we were marching along a “permanently high plateau”—a figure of speech given a macabre humor by the fact that stocks fell off the brink of that plateau one week to the day after he made his statement.”

Simon & Schuster: The Worldly Philosophers

“Whether this be a mere figure of speech used by that scurrilous lampooner, or whether it indicates that the work was circulated by the religious professors of that period, I cannot determine.”

The Practice of Piety: Directing a Christian How to Walk, that He May Please God.