hyperbole

Deliberate or unintentional overstatement, particularly extreme overstatement.

Noun

  1. Deliberate or unintentional overstatement, particularly extreme overstatement.
    • Hyperbole soars too high, or creeps too low, Exceeds the truth, things wonderful to shew. - 1835, L[arret] Langley, “[The Seven Tropes.] Hyperbole.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South...
    • The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence. - 1837 March 6, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Legends of the Province House”, in Twice-Told Tales, Boston, Mass.:...
    • "Nay, nay, good Sumach," interrupted the Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole, with patience[…] - 1841, J[ames] Fenimore Cooper, chapter VIII, in The Deerslayer: A Tale. […],...

    Synonyms: overstatement exaggeration auxesis

    Antonyms: understatement

  2. An instance or example of such overstatement.
    • […]and when he ſpeakes, / 'Tis like a Chime a mending. With tearmes vnſquar' / Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropt, / Would ſeemes Hyperboles - c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of...
    • The honourable gentleman forces us to hear a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and hyperboles, Lord Ellenborough...
  3. A hyperbola.

Origin

From Middle English iperbole, yperbole, from Latin hyperbolē, from Ancient Greek ὑπερβολή (huperbolḗ, “excess, exaggeration”), from ὑπέρ (hupér, “above”) + βάλλω (bállō, “to throw”, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH-). Doublet of hyperbola.

Forms

hyperboles

Related

hyperbola adynaton

Derived

cyberbole hype hyperbolic hyperbolism hyperbolist hyperbolize