hyperbole

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: hy=per=bo=le

CIDE DICTIONARY

hyperbole, n. [L., fr. Gr, prop., an overshooting, excess, fr. Gr. to throw over or beyond; "ype`r over + to throw. See Hyper-, Parable, and cf. Hyperbola.].

 A figure of speech in which the expression is an evident exaggeration of the meaning intended to be conveyed, or by which things are represented as much greater or less, better or worse, than they really are; a statement exaggerated fancifully, through excitement, or for effect.  [1913 Webster]
"Our common forms of compliment are almost all of them extravagant hyperboles."  [1913 Webster]
"Somebody has said of the boldest figure in rhetoric, the hyperbole, that it lies without deceiving."

OXFORD DICTIONARY

hyperbole, n. Rhet. an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally.

Derivative

hyperbolical adj. hyperbolically adv. hyperbolism n.

Etymology

L (as HYPERBOLA)

THESAURUS

hyperbole

abandon, abstractionism, aggrandizement, amplification, ballyhoo, big talk, blowing up, boundlessness, burlesque, caricature, coloring, deformation, dilatation, dilation, distortion, egregiousness, embellishment, enhancement, enlargement, enormousness, exaggerating, exaggeration, excess, excessiveness, exorbitance, exorbitancy, expansion, expressionism, extravagance, extravagancy, extreme, extremes, extremism, extremity, fabulousness, false coloring, falsification, garbling, giantism, gigantism, gluttony, grandiloquence, heightening, huckstering, hyperbolism, hypertrophy, immoderacy, immoderateness, immoderation, inaccuracy, incontinence, inflation, injustice, inordinacy, inordinance, inordinateness, intemperance, intemperateness, litotes, magnification, miscoloring, misdrawing, mispainting, misquotation, misreport, misrepresentation, misstatement, misteaching, monstrousness, nimiety, nonrealism, outrageousness, overdevelopment, overdrawing, overemphasis, overestimation, overgreatness, overgrowth, overindulgence, overkill, overlargeness, overmuch, overmuchness, overstatement, perversion, prodigality, profuseness, puffery, puffing up, radicalism, sensationalism, slanting, stretching, superlative, tall talk, too much, too-muchness, touting, travesty, twisting, unconscionableness, understatement, undueness, unreasonableness, unrestrainedness

ROGET THESAURUS

hyperbole

Metaphor

N metaphor, figure of speech, facon de parler, way of speaking, colloquialism, phrase, figure, trope, metaphor, enallage, catachresis, metonymy, synecdoche, autonomasia, irony, figurativeness, image, imagery, metalepsis, type, anagoge, simile, personification, prosopopoeia, allegory, apologue, parable, fable, allusion, adumbration, application, exaggeration, hyperbole, association, association of ideas (analogy), metaphorical, figurative, catachrestical, typical, tralatitious, parabolic, allegorical, allusive, anagogical, ironical, colloquial, tropical, so to speak, so to say, so to express oneself, as it were, mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.

Exaggeration

N exaggeration, expansion, hyperbole, stretch, strain, coloring, high coloring, caricature, caricatura, extravagance, Baron Munchausen, men in buckram, yarn, fringe, embroidery, traveler's tale, fish story, gooseberry, storm in a teacup, much ado about nothing, puff, puffery, rant, figure of speech, facon de parler, stretch of fancy, stretch of the imagination, flight of fancy, false coloring, aggravation, exaggerated, overwrought, bombastic, hyperbolical, on stilts, fabulous, extravagant, preposterous, egregious, outre, highflying, hyperbolically, excitabat enim fluctus in simpulo.