Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - figurative

1. If you use a word or expression in a figurative sense, you use it with a more abstract or imaginative meaning than its ordinary literal one. ...an event that will change your route–in both the literal and figurative sense. ? literal ADJ: usu ADJ n • figuratively Europe, with Germany literally and figuratively at its centre, is still at the start of a remarkable transformation. ADV: ADV with cl/group, ADV with v 2. Figurative art is a style of art in which people and things are shown in a realistic way. His career spanned some 50 years and encompassed both abstract and figurative painting. ? abstract ADJ: usu ADJ n