hyperbole

      English

      WOTD – 5 May 2006    
      Wikipedia has an article on:

      Wikipedia

      Etymology

      From Latin hyperbole, from Ancient Greek ὑπερβολή (huperbolē, “excess, exaggeration”), from ὑπέρ (huper, “above”) + βάλλω (ballō, “I throw”).

      Pronunciation

      Noun

      hyperbole (plural hyperboles)

      1. (uncountable) Extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device.
      2. (uncountable) Deliberate exaggeration.
      3. (countable) An instance or example of this technique.
      4. (countable, obsolete) A hyperbola.

      Quotations

      1602 1837 1841 1843 1910 2001
      15th c. 16th c. 17th c. 18th c. 19th c. 20th c. 21st c.
      • 1602 — William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida i 3
        ...and when he speaks
        'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar'd,
        Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd,
        Would seem hyperboles.
      • 1837 — Nathaniel Hawthorne, Legends of the Province House
        The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence.
      • 1841 — James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer, ch. 28
        "Nay - nay - good Sumach," interrupted Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole with patience.
      • 1843 — Thomas Babington Macaulay, The Gates of Somnauth
        The honourable gentleman forces us to hear a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and hyperboles, Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort of eloquence?
      • c.1910 — Theodore Roosevelt, Productive Scholarship
        Of course the hymn has come to us from somewhere else, but I do not know from where; and the average native of our village firmly believes that it is indigenous to our own soil—which it can not be, unless it deals in hyperbole, for the nearest approach to a river in our neighborhood is the village pond.
      • 2001 - Tom Bentley, Daniel Stedman Jones, The Moral Universe
        The perennial problem, especially for the BBC, has been to reconcile the hyperbole-driven agenda of newspapers with the requirement of balance, which is crucial to the public service remit.

      Synonyms

      Antonyms

      Derived terms

      Related terms

      Translations

      Rhetorical device

      See also

      ↑Jump back a section

      French

      Etymology

      From Latin hyperbole, from Ancient Greek ὑπερβολή (huperbolē, “excess, exaggeration”), from ὑπέ (huper, “above”) + βάλλω (ballō, “I throw”).

      Pronunciation

      Noun

      hyperbole f (plural hyperboles)

      1. (rhetoric) hyperbole
      2. (geometry) hyperbola
      ↑Jump back a section

      Latin

      Etymology

      From Ancient Greek ὑπερβολή (huperbolē, “excess, exaggeration”), from ὑπέ (huper, “above”) + βάλλω (ballō, “I throw”).

      Pronunciation

      • IPA: /hʏˈpɛːrbɔleː/

      Noun

      hyperbolē (genitive hyperbolēs); f, first declension

      1. exaggeration; hyperbole
      2. ablative singular of hyperbolē
      3. vocative singular of hyperbolē

      Inflection

      First declension (1). (Greek pattern)

      Number Singular Plural
      nominative hyperbolē hyperbolae
      genitive hyperbolēs hyperbolārum
      dative hyperbolae hyperbolīs
      accusative hyperbolēn hyperbolās
      ablative hyperbolē hyperbolīs
      vocative hyperbolē hyperbolae
      ↑Jump back a section
      Last modified on 13 June 2013, at 12:56