Identifying Figurative Language in Unfamiliar Passages

On a timed reading assessment, you rarely get to choose a passage you already know well. Instead, you must read an unfamiliar excerpt once or twice and then answer questions that ask not just what a figurative phrase is called, but what it accomplishes within that specific context. This lesson narrows in on that exam skill: locating figurative language quickly inside an unseen passage and justifying your interpretation using the passage's own wording, rather than cataloguing every device an author could theoretically use.

Writing with figurative language and identifying it in someone else's text require different habits of mind. A writer chooses a comparison deliberately, with full knowledge of the intended effect. A reader encountering that same comparison for the first time has to work backward: notice that a phrase cannot be literally true, classify the technique being used, and infer why the author reached for that particular device rather than a plain statement. Test-style questions almost always reward this second kind of reasoning, since they ask you to justify an interpretation rather than simply supply a definition.

Before naming a device, ask a single diagnostic question of any striking phrase: could this sentence be literally, physically true? If a passage describes fog that "crept in on silent feet," you know immediately that fog has no feet, so the phrase cannot be literal. That impossibility, or at least improbability, signals figurative language and tells you to look more closely at how the comparison is constructed.

Most test items that ask you to identify figurative language are testing whether you can separate devices that resemble one another on the surface. Three distinctions come up repeatedly in passage-based questions.

Simile versus metaphor: both devices compare unlike things, but a simile signals the comparison openly with "like" or "as," while a metaphor asserts that one thing simply is the other. "Her resolve was a locked door" is a metaphor; "her resolve was like a locked door" is a simile. The difference matters because a metaphor often reads as more absolute and more urgent than the hedged, qualified feel of a simile.

Personification versus literal action verbs: a sentence stating that "the committee decided" uses a verb literally, since a committee is a group of people capable of deciding. A sentence stating that "the storm decided to linger" assigns a human choice to a weather system, which is personification. The test is whether the subject performing the action is actually capable of that action in reality.

Hyperbole versus simple intensity: describing a hallway as "long" is literal description, even if subjective. Describing it as "a hallway that stretched for a thousand miles" is hyperbole, a deliberate exaggeration that no reasonable reader takes at face value. Hyperbole is identifiable because the exaggeration is so extreme that accepting it literally would be absurd.

A correct identification on its own rarely earns full credit on an analytical question. You are typically asked to connect the device to a specific effect: mood, characterization, pacing, or theme. Consider this short excerpt:

"The old house exhaled dust with every opening door, as if it resented being disturbed."

Here, "exhaled" personifies the house by giving it breath, and the simile beginning with "as if" extends that personification into an emotional state, resentment. Naming both devices is only the first step; the stronger answer explains that this combination makes the house feel like a reluctant, almost sentient presence, which shapes the reader's sense of unease before any character even enters the scene.

Read the following line from a hypothetical passage: "Grief sat on her chest like a stone that grew heavier with each breath."

1. Apply the literal test: grief, an abstract emotion, cannot physically sit on a chest, so the phrase is figurative.
2. Classify the device: the comparison uses "like," which marks it as a simile comparing grief to a stone.
3. Identify the secondary detail: the stone "grew heavier," which intensifies the comparison over time rather than treating it as fixed.
4. Explain the effect: the simile converts an invisible emotional state into a physical, measurable weight, helping the reader feel the cumulative, worsening nature of the character's grief rather than simply being told that she is sad.

This four-step sequence, literal test, classification, supporting detail, and effect, works for almost any figurative phrase you encounter on a passage-based assessment, because it forces you to move past recognition and into interpretation.

Several recurring traps cost students points even when they can define each device correctly in isolation. Watch for passages that mix a literal description with a nearby figurative one, since answer choices sometimes misattribute the figurative effect to the literal sentence. Watch also for extended figurative language, where a single comparison is developed across several sentences rather than contained in one; the device does not end with the first clause. Finally, be cautious with idiomatic expressions that have become so common they barely register as figurative, such as "time flew by." These remain legitimate instances of figurative language (in this case, a form of personification applied to time) even though they feel conversational rather than literary.

Related lessons

• Literary Elements Devices: Using Figurative Language