ABSTRACT
Several varieties of figurative language can be distinguished. First, there is the language of emotion, real or pretended, which brings forth verbal expressions beyond the literal. It is thought that the literal does not do justice to the strength of the emotion. Then there is figurative language used to express things beyond our experience or understanding. Religion and magic are spheres where the claimed reality often cannot be expressed in simple, literal terms, though caution is required when considering such phenomena from other or earlier civilizations. What is not literal to us might have been taken as literal by them. Finally there is the figurative language which has become so only as a result of changing customs and circumstances. New York City’s Hacking Authority regulated horse-drawn vehicles when its name was coined, but when the internal combustion engine replaced horses as the means of propelling vehicles for public hire the old name stuck and became metaphorical.
