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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
exaggerate
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
greatly
▪ Consider the death of Amtrak, to paraphrase Mark Twain, to be greatly exaggerated.
▪ Its position is similar to that of Mark Twain: reports of its death would be greatly exaggerated.
▪ All of these pressures are greatly exaggerated in the new lifestyles shown on the electronic media.
grossly
▪ The Mercator projection gives a popular, rectilinear picture of the Earth's surface but grossly exaggerates dimensions near the poles.
▪ It grossly exaggerates the amount of subjective culpability.
▪ They tended to exaggerate grossly the role which the intelligentsia could play regardless of socio-economic developments.
when
▪ I am not exaggerating when I say that I was inspired by all I saw at the adult education centres in Croydon.
▪ I am not exaggerating when I say that this flood is eroding academic intellectual life.
▪ She had not exaggerated when she'd said she felt weary.
wildly
▪ Had she not wildly exaggerated the significance of the advertisement?
■ NOUN
danger
▪ Bismarck was right to distrust the cities as breeders of socialism, but wrong to exaggerate the danger.
difference
▪ It is silly to exaggerate differences when the similarities are also significant.
▪ The antagonistic interactions tend to sharpen up some otherwise fuzzy boundaries, since they serve to exaggerate the differences.
▪ Space may well exaggerate such differences.
▪ Traditional theories of autonomous man have exaggerated species differences.
▪ This all simply helped to exaggerate the differences that always existed between Charman and the three other members.
extent
▪ Pluralists exaggerate the extent to which all groups enjoy some influence.
▪ But the model he develops tends to distort the past in order to exaggerate the extent of change.
▪ None the less, it is possible to exaggerate the extent of these limitations.
▪ In both cases it is important not to exaggerate the extent to which it has been implemented.
▪ It would be wrong, however, to exaggerate the extent of women's opposition to this benefit.
importance
▪ I think, on the other hand, that it is possible to exaggerate the importance of origins.
problem
▪ She had not yet learned how greatly Brian exaggerated his financial problems in order to keep her in line.
significance
▪ It is not easy to exaggerate their significance.
▪ Having exaggerated the likelihood of Labour's victory, the media are almost bound to exaggerate the significance of its defeat.
▪ In the context of de Gaulle's subsequent career, it would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of the war years.
▪ The tendency of second homes to be clustered in specific pleasant rural locations is probably the characteristic that exaggerates their significance.
▪ It is impossible to exaggerate the revolutionary significance of the recognition of a binding judicial tribunal external to the realm.
▪ Had she not wildly exaggerated the significance of the advertisement?
▪ One should not exaggerate the significance of the change.
■ VERB
tend
▪ They tended to exaggerate grossly the role which the intelligentsia could play regardless of socio-economic developments.
▪ They quickly detect changes in the visual image and tend to exaggerate them.
▪ The economic impact studies in sports most often tend to exaggerate the benefits making these reports misleading and unnecessary.
▪ The press tends to exaggerate the disagreements, and is over-eager to look for administration turf wars.
▪ Shine draws the attention and tends to exaggerate.
▪ Winter tends to exaggerate virtue and vice.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ "He said you walked 30 miles." "No - he's exaggerating. It was only about 15."
▪ Hanley didn't exaggerate when he said Geary was the best basketball player the team ever had.
▪ Newspapers tend to exaggerate their influence on the way people vote.
▪ Rob said he caught a 20-pound fish, but I think he was exaggerating.
▪ The grass in the garden was about three feet high - I'm not exaggerating.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ In addition, other factors such as endotoxaemia, sepsis, and fever may contribute to further exaggerate these circulatory abnormalities.
▪ It is important not to exaggerate this emphasis.
▪ Meanwhile, his behavior became even more exaggerated.
▪ Reward systems often exaggerate the mismatch by offering the wrong rewards to the wrong people.
▪ The Communists vastly exaggerated their own Resistance role in order to attract postwar political support.
▪ The police go into classrooms and exaggerate some of the risks.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Exaggerate

Exaggerate \Ex*ag"ger*ate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Exaggerated; p. pr. & vb. n. Exaggerating . ] [L. exaggeratus, p. p. of exaggerare to heap up; ex out + aggerare to heap up, fr. agger heap, aggerere to bring to; ad to + gerere to bear. See Jest. ]

  1. To heap up; to accumulate. [Obs.] ``Earth exaggerated upon them [oaks and firs].''
    --Sir M. Hale.

  2. To amplify; to magnify; to enlarge beyond bounds or the truth; to delineate extravagantly; to overstate the truth concerning.

    A friend exaggerates a man's virtues.
    --Addison.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
exaggerate

1530s, "to pile up, accumulate," from Latin exaggeratus, past participle of exaggerare "heighten, amplify, magnify," literally "to heap, pile, load, fill," from ex- "thoroughly" (see ex-) + aggerare "heap up, accumulate," figuratively "amplify, magnify," from agger (genitive aggeris) "heap," from aggerere "bring together, carry toward," from assimilated form of ad- "to, toward" (see ad-) + gerere "carry" (see gest). Sense of "overstate" first recorded in English 1560s. Related: Exaggerated; exaggerating.

Wiktionary
exaggerate

vb. To overstate, to describe more than is fact.

WordNet
exaggerate
  1. v. to enlarge beyond bounds or the truth; "tended to romanticize and exaggerate this `gracious Old South' imagery" [syn: overstate, overdraw, hyperbolize, hyerbolise, magnify, amplify] [ant: understate]

  2. do something to an excessive degree; "He overdid it last night when he did 100 push-ups" [syn: overdo]

Usage examples of "exaggerate".

Apart from the requirements of a gradation of ranks, or the consequences of a conquest, the multitude delight to surround their chiefs with privileges--whether it be that their vanity makes them thus to aggrandize one of their own creations, or whether they try to conceal the humiliation of subjection by exaggerating the importance of those who rule them.

There was so much of her, such incredibly long legs, such an extreme flow of line and volume, Beheim became entranced by the exaggerated perspectives available, gazing up at the equatorial swell of her belly toward the flattened mounds of her breasts with their dark oases of areola and turreted nipples, or down from her breasts toward the unruly pubic tuft between her thighs, in all reminding him by its smoothness of the sand sculpture of a sleeping giantess he had seen years before on a beach in Spain.

At all events, there can be no doubt that the Arkite theorists have exaggerated the importance and extent of these views beyond all tolerable bounds, and even to absurdity.

An exaggerated and uncompromising asceticism has won for many Christian saints their honours on earth and their assurance of special privileges in heaven.

I do not, for a moment, want to suggest that there was no truth in his Bhakti, but there was much mixture in it and even what was mental and vital was very much exaggerated.

But the most irritating of girl--men is assuredly the Parisian and the boulevardier, in whom the appearance of intelligence is more marked and who combines in himself all the attractions and all the faults of those charming creatures in an exaggerated degree in virtue of his masculine temperament.

Grosvenor Square, Comte de Cavilon stepped from his closed coach with exaggerated steps and minced to the door.

I glanced at Liza, who pulled a comical face and gave an exaggerated shrug to indicate that she did not know why Chad should be so interested.

She dines with me on Sundays, and if you would care to come to dinner next Sunday you will confess that I have not exaggerated her capacities.

She might be exaggerating to soothe her pride, but Mary did not believe it.

She watched the canopy up the brightness, exaggerating the incoming light until they could see the starlight on the North Waste Land, the great long streaks of coloured sands and outcrop rocks, silvery ghosts, coming closer all the time.

What are the origin and history of the specific thoughts involved in exaggerating a threat?

Bonneval, somewhat exaggerating the danger I had run in trying to raise the veil of the handsome daughter of Scio.

I related the whole affair to the bishop, exaggerating the uproar, making much of the injustice of such proceedings, and railing at a vexatious police daring to molest travellers and to insult the sacred rights of individuals and nations.

I spoke to the masters of all of them, exaggerating considerably the injury that had been done to me.