Hyperbole

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /haɪˈpɜːbəli/

Definitions

1. A figure of speech that deliberately overstates to emphasize a point or create strong impression
2. An intentional exaggeration used to highlight or dramatize a situation in speech or writing
3. A rhetorical device where reality is magnified beyond truth to produce a vivid or humorous effect

Etymology: The Greek rhetorician's word began as a plain physical image: "huperbolē" meant a throw that goes beyond a mark, or an excess in general. Greek speakers built it from "hyper", "over" or "beyond", and "ballein", "to throw", the same root that gives English "ballistic" and "symbol" through its relatives. A thrown object that overshoots its target is the picture at its heart. The term was then adopted into Latin as "hyperbole" and reached English in Middle English as "iperbole", a rhetorical term for deliberate overstatement. Rhetoric, not weather or sport, was where the word lived: a figure of speech in which a speaker deliberately overshoots the truth for effect. Its relative "hyperbola", the curve in geometry, is a doublet, meaning the same Greek source came into English by a separate route. The mathematical sense comes from a different image of excess, the curve that "overshoots" the conditions defining it, and it entered the language as a distinct technical word.

Synonyms: exaggeration, overstatement, amplification, embellishment, magnification

Antonyms: understatement, minimization