metaphorical
I don't know if he's speaking metaphorically or literally.
The nights are darker here. I don't mean that metaphorically, I'm talking about the quality of the night.
She tells the story of a woman who is metaphorically buried alive - by marriage, by the past.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Figurative use of language
allegorically
allusion
anthropomorphic
anthropomorphize
double meaning
fig
figurative
figuratively
figure of speech
idiom
metaphorical
mixed metaphor
non-literal
non-metaphorical
so to speakidiom
speak
symbol
trope
unironic
unironically

Examples of metaphorically

metaphorically
Moreover, human individuals and institutions "invest," metaphorically, or even literally, in other individuals or institutions to enhance their own returns.
We thus metaphorically refer to this kind of movement as 'agnostic' movement.
In principle, this applies to all specialist terms, including those which become de-terminologized by being used metaphorically or less precisely in standard usage.
Metaphorically, there is no transportation of properties across the (sortal) gulf that separates the two domains.
They appear to believe they are speaking scientifically, not metaphorically, and that their words have some natural meaning that does not require explanation.
Yet, the final phrase may only refer metaphorically to the bullying character of the asylum's punitive measures.
A number of cases are reasonably described metaphorically as the reading of a virtual document, differing in the kind of document envisaged.
We can think of backlash metaphorically as a bungee cord that snaps when stretched too far.
Incense is the resin or sap or, metaphorically, the "blood" of trees.
At the same time silence was metaphorically conflated with chastity and speech with wantonness.
Snowprints for flute, cello, piano, electronics and video explores snow both metaphorically and sonically.
Pitting tradition against progress, the difference in their approaches to aging are metaphorically mapped through their ensuing literary disagreement.
Its shape (both literally and metaphorically) has varied, and continues to vary, through time.
These facts alone allow the term "selection" to be applied metaphorically to the operant case.
Their shows have also, literally and metaphorically, always indicated the labour of production and the cost of such dreaming.
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