Crossword clues for hyperbole
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
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.
Our common forms of compliment are almost all of them
extravagant hyperboles.
--Blair.
Somebody has said of the boldest figure in rhetoric,
the hyperbole, that it lies without deceiving.
--Macaulay.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
early 15c., from Latin hyperbole, from Greek hyperbole "exaggeration, extravagance," related to hyperballein "to throw over or beyond," from hyper- "beyond" + bole "a throwing, a casting, the stroke of a missile, bolt, beam," from bol-, nominative stem of ballein "to throw" (see ballistics). Rhetorical sense is found in Aristotle and Isocrates.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context uncountable English) Extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device. 2 (context uncountable English) deliberate exaggeration. 3 (context countable English) An instance or example of this technique. 4 (context countable obsolete English) A hyperbola.
WordNet
n. extravagant exaggeration [syn: exaggeration]
Wikipedia
Hyperbole (ˈ; , huperbolḗ, from (hupér, “above”) and (bállō, "I throw")) is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. In rhetoric, it is also sometimes known as auxesis ( "growth"). In poetry and oratory, it emphasizes, evokes strong feelings, and creates strong impressions. As a figure of speech, it is usually not meant to be taken literally.
Usage examples of "hyperbole".
Medals are usually earned though the author cautions the general public that often woven into the formal citation is that germ of truth, surrounded by some degree of hyperbole and literary license.
When the last medal had been awarded, the last speech read, the final hyperbolic hyperbole driven home, they found themselves outside the justice building once again, high above the bustling streets and boulevards of the capital of Draymia.
This also called for a new style of presentation, full of breathless hyperbole and patriotic exclamation.
And though Mirabeau spoke of the sacrifice of money, not lives, his Roman manner of prosecution exactly anticipated a more sinister hyperbole to come.
For all the hyperbole, the distribution of long, sharpened iron weapons was not an insignificant addition to the capacity for popular violence.
Marat was speaking metaphorically or with the kind of punitive hyperbole that he had made a speciality of his paper.
Whether Shangri-la, or Utopia, Paradisaical Eden or the Elysian Fields, whether The Red-path of Nominative Hyperbole or The Last and Most Porous Membrane of Cathexian Belief, there was a valley, a greensward, a hill or summit, a body of water or a field of grain whence it all came.
Tower of Babel which has sprung up in Paris has killed that pretention, I think we shall feel and speak more modestly about our stone hyperbole, our materialization of the American love of the superlative.
Jefferson was fond of saying, and Adams, in the spirit of eighteenth-century hyperbole, might well have agreed.
To this day, even overrated experts like Crassus Orator and old Mucius Scaevola the Augur admit that his rhetoric was peerless, that no one has ever used aphorism and hyperbole better!
Then he speaks, in another access of seriocomic hyperbole, of the death of Countess Du Barry on the guillotine.
I do think I wrote him that Mencken often resorted to Swiftian hyperbole and was not to be taken too literally.
I wrote him that Mencken often resorted to Swiftian hyperbole and was not to be taken too literally.
Others hide in emotional hyperbole, in extravagances of gratitude or sorrow.
Ron Shock, a forty-year-old from Amarillo, Texas, who had turned twenty-one in prison and run several businesses before becoming a full-time stand-up comedian, had a small-town drawl and a gift for hyperbole that made him an unrivaled storyteller.