Welcome to the MedLibrary.org Wikipedia Supplement on Exaggeration -- Please Click to Return to Front Page

Hyperbole (pronounced /haɪˈpɝːbəli/ hye-PER-buh-lee; "HYE-per-bowl" is a mispronunciation) comes from ancient Greek "ὑπερβολή" (meaning excess or exaggeration) and is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is rarely meant to be taken literally.

Hyperbole is used to create emphasis. It is a literary device often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. It is also a visual technique in which a deliberate exaggeration of a particular part of an image is employed. An example is the exaggeration of a person's facial feature in a political cartoon.

Etymology

Derived from the Greek ὑπερβολή (literally 'overshooting' or 'excess'), it is a cognate of hyperbola. Antonyms to hyperbole include meiosis, litotes, understatement, and bathos (the 'let down' after a hyperbole in a phrase).

Examples

Some examples of use of hyperbole include:

• These books weigh a ton. (These books are heavy.)
  
• I could sleep for a year. (I could sleep for a long time.)
  
• He must have jumped a mile into the air. (He jumped very high into the air.)
• I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse. (I'm so hungry, I could eat a lot.)
  
• I'm doing like 15 trillion things right now. (I'm busy.)
  
• Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. (Boston State-House is an important place.)
  

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Ch. 6

• "Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together." This uses hyperbole to illustrate the use of hyperbole.
• He was so big he used a tree trunk for a toothpick. (He is a huge person.)
• This coffee tastes like An old man has been heated to render out the earwax. (This coffee tastes horrible.)
  

A common source of unwitting humour is when hyperbole is preceded by the word "literally":

• "I was bullied at work in several different ways. I was forced to literally work with both hands tied behind my back. If I wanted time off I literally had to fight for it." [1]

External links

Look up hyperbole in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples
• Audio illustrations of hyperbole as figure of speech

This literature-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 6 January 2009, at 23:06.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Exaggeration".

The URL for this specific entry is:

• http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Exaggeration

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.