Figuratively saying or figuratively living?

 Kiki says her friend was drawing dragons, so she drew one too. 

Colouring halfway, one cute, skinny Pikachu.

You know, we all use exaggerated speech all the time. Most of the times, unknowingly. That's because it has gotten to be common. When we are hungry or extremely hungry, we might say we're starving or famished. But the context is not the same as starvation or dying of hunger but we use the word figuratively. As students, sometimes we get better marks when we use expressive words and colourful synonyms even though the context may have been exaggerated. 

We read a short story last night, a book from the library. Bugs Bunny was expressing his thirst as "dying of thirst" in a figurative way, so I guess I would just have to explain to the kids that some words are being used loosely and are not to be taken seriously (cheapening of value to the words or phrases), however we ought to learn to decipher when is what and what is when, that means, we must first know its root meaning so that we can then recognize when it is being used loosely. If not, we might just pick up it's cheapened context and think that life's like that.