A figure of speech matched a figure of speech (8)
I believe the answer is:
metaphor
'figure of speech' is the definition.
(metaphor is a kind of figure of speech)
'a figure of speech matched a' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'a' is within the answer.
'of' could be 'o' and 'o' is located in the answer.
'matched' could be 'met' (meeting is a kind of matching) and 'met' is found in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for metaphor that I've seen before include "To hamper, badly, a figure of speech" , "Captain of industry, eg" , "Figure of speech for home trap" , "Don't take that literally" , "Figure of speech - allegory" .)