Hyperbole

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(Redirected from Exaggeration)

This article is about a figure of speech, not to be confused with the mathematical term hyperbola.

Hype redirects here. For the popular urban music video director, see Hype Williams.

Template:Wiktionary A hyperbole, largely synonymous with exaggeration and overconsulting, is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated or extravagant. It may be used due to strong feelings or is used to create a strong impression and is not meant to be taken literally. It gives greater emphasis. It is often used in poetry and is a literary device.

"He is as big as a house!"
"I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!"
"That's the worst idea I've ever heard."
"You are the ugliest person in the world!"
"This book weighs a ton."
"This is pretty much the worst film ever made."
"Women get millions of yeast infections."
"Hyperbole is the worst thing in the world."
"Talking to you is more boring than watching grass grow through wet paint in church."
"I'm so hungry I could eat a blue whale with an endocrine disorder."
"That man is nicer than Santa Claus on mood elevators!"

The antonym to hyperbole is understatement.

In show business, hyperbole (known as hype or media hype) is the practice of spending money on public relations in an attempt to bolster public interest in (for example) a movie, television show, or performing artist. Often the entertainment value of the thing being hyped is exaggerated.

A common mis-pronunciation is Template:IPA ("HY-per-bowl"). This was seen in action in the song "These Words" by Natasha Bedingfield The correct pronunciation is phonetically said as Template:IPA ("hy-PER-buh-lee").

The modern slang term hype, in its usage as meaning extravagant publicity, is probably derived from the word hyperbole

One effect is that hyperbole becomes habitual until the word's force is weakened by overuse and the word gets to literally mean what it has been used as.

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Examples

In Latin: manducare, which originally meant "to eat like the greedy comedy character Manducus", was used so often in Vulgar Latin as slang for ordinary eating that it evolved into French manger and Italian mangiare, which merely mean "to eat".

Some modern English examples are:-

"Torture", too often used as slang for ordinary stage fright and embarrassment and publicity nerves.
"Beaten to pulp". A web search for this phrase (entered in quotes) will find ten to twenty uses as exaggerated slang for ordinary defeats in sports matches, for every use in its correct meaning to refer to a type of severe violence.
"Terrific" came from Latin terri-ficus = "terror-making", which was in earlier times its meaning, but the word since them was used so often exaggeratedly as a vaguely-defined word of praise that its meaning has become weakened: for example, a book first published in 1917 about Hindu religious matters says that the Hindu god Rudra "was a terrific God", an expression which was true then, but now sounds silly because the meaning of the word "terrific" since then has been so much weakened.