Latent figure is a figure of speech or image existing beneath the surface meaning of literal language, requiring interpretive work to reveal its presence and significance. Unlike explicit figures that announce their figurative nature, latent figures remain embedded in apparently straightforward text, emerging only through careful analysis of patterns, connotations, or contextual relationships. The figure may be systematically woven through imagery that appears purely descriptive, or abstract ideas may be consistently represented through concrete details without acknowledging the substitution. Latent figures create textual depth, rewarding close reading while maintaining surface accessibility, demonstrating poetry's capacity for simultaneous literal and figurative operation.

A Latent figure is a rhetorical or imagistic device present but not overt—requires contextual or intertextual knowledge to recognize, common in allusive poetry.