Hyperbole

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Hyperbole \Hy*per"bo*le\, 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}.] (Rhet.)
     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.                  --Blair.
     [1913 Webster]
  
           Somebody has said of the boldest figure in rhetoric,
           the hyperbole, that it lies without deceiving.
                                                    --Macaulay.
     Hyperbolic

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  hyperbole
       n : extravagant exaggeration [syn: {exaggeration}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  105 Moby Thesaurus words for "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