the.com/figure of speech

means A phrase that bends literal truth on purpose — metaphor, hyperbole, irony and their kin — to make a point land more vividly than plain words would.

from From Latin figura, 'shape' or 'form,' via the rhetoricians' notion of 'figures' of language — ways of shaping or molding ordinary speech into something more artful. The phrase entered English as a direct translation of this rhetorical tradition, stretching back to Greek and Roman teachers of oratory who catalogued dozens of these 'shapes' (metaphor, irony, hyperbole) as tools for persuasion. The core idea has stayed remarkably intact for over two thousand years: speech can be 'shaped' away from the literal without breaking.