Any others on the spectrum use FoS often?

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Sorry bout having to abbreviate figures of speech. I just simply wanted it to fit into the topic title.

I know that there is the whole "Those on the spectrum can ONLY think literally" myth going on. It is just that IMO. This does not in any way imply that those on the spectrum can/will have trouble with it. I just feel that using it as a complete generalization is totally and utterly false, and thus pointless.

Now as for the question. Anyone else use metaphors, figures of speech and stuff on a day to day basis?

I know I do, and I do it quite often. I will say though that it definitely makes communication easier for me for some reason. I don't quite really care if people get annoyed because they don't "get" my speech and writing patterns, I feel that it is simply a part of who I am and there is absolutely no need to change it. The same can go for my sarcasm/deadpanning as well.

Yep. I use both metaphors and figures of speech regularly. I tend to use archaic idioms and somewhat elaborate, poetic, floral language in speech, which people have commented on more than once. They make statements like, "Yes, he does sound like that all the time."

I put it down to my voracious reading as a child, from which I gained a large vocabulary and a propensity towards uncommon phrasings and sentence structuring.

I do so rather often, but I find that I'm still quite literal minded at times.

I like to try them out, but I mess them up and every once in a while end up in trouble for it. I find I do better if I stick to plain language.

I think I use similes quite often . . . which may or may not be the same thing. I do tend to take things literally though, as can be seen from this transcript of a conversation between me, my flatmate and the Ikea hot dog vendor:

I: Could I please have a vegetarian hot dog?
Vendor: Would you like anything else with that?
I: Um . . . bread.
Vendor: What?
Adam: No, she means a drink.
I: Oh, no thank you.

I have learned to use metaphors/similes and figures of speech pretty well because I learned about them in school and my mom uses them fairly often.

It's not that I don't understand figures of speech, it's that I cannot help seeing the literal meaning too - and often the literal meaning grabs my attention more forcefully and distracts me. I am too busy thinking "That doesn't make sense" or "That's funny" to attend to the figurative meaning. So someone says "Don't go overboard" (meaning don't overdo something), and my brain is too busy laughing at the visual image of someone falling off a ship - or even just imagining what a really excessive action would be ("so, you mean, I am not supposed to be THIS outlandish ... Or THIS EVEN more extreme outlandish? Or ..."). I am busy trying to imagine the truly "overboard" that I am not suppose to be. So my brain sometimes gets stuck on the imagery and doesn't move on.

But in other contexts I can be quite happy with figurative meanings.

Example. At school when I first read the poem Ozymandias, I was struck by the fact that it "wasn't true" - there was no such statute out in the desert. The poet had made the whole story up - or at least, that is what my school poetry book said (it is not such a made up story, according to Wikipedia). So I wrote an essay basically saying it was a fraud, the poet hadn't actually seen such a statute, it was a false report.

Eventually (probably years later) I realised that the poem wasn't meant to be taken literally: the point was the image of someone saying they had built a great empire, and now there was nothing to show - great deeds are fleeting, human achievements - especially the boastful kind - don't last. Aha! Now I understand.

But something in the back of my mind keeps saying - yeah, but it was made up, he didn't really see a statue like that. The funny thing is, I don't react like that to novels, especially fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings. I love fantasy - it is obviously made up, and I don't feel "cheated" (I don't think: "you said you saw a statue ... but you didn't. You lied!").

So I can see and enjoy figures of speech, but I cannot help seeing literal meanings and being diverted or distracted by them too. It sometimes means that I am smiling at comments that no one else smiles at - the comments may strike me as funny, because my mind is off imagining something outlandish that fits the literal or figurative words...

I use them all the time. One thing people don't realize is that there's a difference between using and understanding (although I memorized the meaning of a lot of them). Another thing people often don't realize is that using highly metaphorical language used to be explicitly mentioned in the diagnostic criteria, whereas now they just talk about idiosyncratic language (for autism, I don't think that's part of the AS criteria).

I s=use them once in a while but they are only ones mom used a lot when I was growing up but not all the time. They aren't natural for me and I sometimes mess them up a bit. When I hear them I usually visually see the literal meaning but if I heard them before I will then find the real meaning in my memory but if I haven't heard it I often feel very confused.

Too often, i use them, I think.
Too often, because as often as not, they're misunderstood.

Instead of metaphor, i use analogy. Not everyone can always see the connection from A to B, but some can. And it's usually ONLY when i use such an analogy that I see that proverbial lightbulb turn on over someone's head when up to then they were just NOT getting it.

But all of these Figures of speech and idioms and such, are things that i have to "translate my thoughts into" And I only do them, because i've learned that if I CAN it does help keep people from getting turned off of what i'm saying. Because otherwise, i'm far to academic in my wording. I love big words, because big, seldom used words still retain their "REAL DEFINITIONS" and haven't been bastardized by hundreds of years of idiot-speak. The longer the word, almost without fail, the more chance the word has of having a very narrowly, specific definition that unless you don't know the word, can't be misconstrued.

I have this need to be concise. It's almost painful to have to generalize what I'm saying. But for the most part I have to do it with every sentence that I speak.

yes i do that all the time,