Figures appear as a privileged territory for the study of the relations between rhetoric and argumentation, inasmuch as they have constantly been situated at the intersection of these two domains by their analysts. Beginning with an examination of the treatment of figures in the history of rhetoric, this article tracesa continuous evolution of their status in argumentation. After the classical period of oratorical rhetoric, which fully recognized the argumentativity of figures, a figurative rhetoric without argumentative value developed. However, in recent decades, interest has renewed in the part figures play in argumentation. -The second part of this article investigates in greater detail the relations between rhetoricity and figurative argumentation. Whereas figures are inherently rhetorical through their functional matrixes, they are argumentative only in certain structural and contextual conditions. Moreover, figures have many different characteristics by which they can be transformed into condensed forms of arguments. With the typical case of metonymy used in advertising, this article concludes by illustrating very concretely how a rhetorical figure can be argumentative. Through its transfers by contiguity, metonymy used in advertising offers strongly implicit arguments which revalue the products and their consumers. It thus participates in a procedure of persuasion/seduction, symptomatic of figurative argumentation.