Exaggeration - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

# Exaggeration

### From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Exaggeration means: describing something and making it more than it really is. The verb is to exaggerate.

An example of exaggeration would be: “I was walking along when suddenly this enormous dog came up to me. It was as big as an elephant”. The dog may have been big, but it was certainly not as big as that.

Overstatement is another word which almost means the same thing. The opposite is understatement.

A hyperbole (pronounce: “hy-PER-bo-lee”) is an exaggeration used in literature. It is a figure of speech. The opposite to hyperbole is meiosis. It is an understatement.

People exaggerate (overstate) because they have strong feelings about something (in the example above the person may have been frightened by the dog). People may exaggerate to make people listen to what they say. They may do it to emphasize something. They may also exaggerate just to sound funny:

- ”I’ve heard that a million times”
- ”You’ve got a brain the size of a pinhead”.

People may understate because they are being modest:

- “Thank you, yes, I suppose I may have helped a little” (in a situation where the person actually helped a lot).

In modern slang the word “hype” is sometimes used meaning that something is getting more publicity than it really deserves. This comes from the word “hyperbole”.

## [edit] See also

- Irony
- Metaphor
- Simile
- Grammar

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Category: Figures of speech

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