Word.ws English Dictionary

hyperbole

UK/haɪˈpɜːbəli/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/hɑjˈpəːbəlɪj/

hyperbole noun: deliberate overstatement, particularly extreme overstatement.

hyperbole: Pair of black platform combat boots with silver accents
Photo by Smithsonian on Unsplash

Noun

hyperbole (countable and uncountable, plural hyperboles)

  1. (rhetoric, uncountable) Deliberate overstatement, particularly extreme overstatement.
    • Hyperbole soars too high, or creeps too low,
      Exceeds the truth, things wonderful to shew.1835, L[arret] Langley, “[The Seven Tropes.] Hyperbole.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 12
    • The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence.1837 March 6, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Legends of the Province House”, in Twice-Told Tales, Boston, Mass.: American Stationers Co.; John B. Russell, →OCLC
    Antonyms:
    understatement
  2. (countable) An instance or example of such overstatement.
    • […]and when he ſpeakes, / 'Tis like a Chime a mending. With tearmes vnſquar' / Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropt, / Would ſeemes Hyperbolesc. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
    • 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?1843, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The Gates of Somnauth
  3. (countable, obsolete) A hyperbola.

hyperbole meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

hyperbole in Hindi

rhetorical device
अत्युक्ति atyukti, अतिशयोक्ति atiśyokti

hyperbole in Tamil

உயர்வு நவிற்சி, மிகை நவிற்சி, மிகையாகக் கூறும் இலக்கிய அணி, மிகைமொழி

hyperbole in Urdu

مبالغہ

hyperbole in Bengali

অত্যুক্তি, অতিরঞ্জন, বাড়িয়ে বলা
More languagesFewer languages
hyperbole in Telugu
అతిశయోక్తి atiśayōkti
hyperbole in Malayalam
അത്യുക്തി, അതിശയോക്തി, അതികഥ, അതിശയോക്തിപ്രയോഗം
hyperbole in Kannada
ಅತಿಶಯೊಕ್ತಿ atiśayokti
hyperbole in Gujarati
અતિશયોક્તિ atiśyokti
hyperbole in Tagalog
sawig
hyperbole in Arabic
مُبَالَغَةٌ mubālaḡatun
hyperbole in Thai
อติพจน์, อธิพจน์

Examples of hyperbole in a sentence

  • "Nay, nay, good Sumach," interrupted the Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole, with patience[…]1841, J[ames] Fenimore Cooper, chapter VIII, in The Deerslayer: A Tale. […], 1st British edition, volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […]...
  • I play to people's fantasies. […] That's why a little hyperbole never hurts.1987, Donald Trump, Tony Schwartz, The Art of the Deal, New York: Random House, →ISBN, page 40:
  • 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.2001, Tom Bentley, Daniel Stedman Jones, The Moral Universe:
  • Trump has always believed in “truthful hyperbole,” as he called it in “The Art of the Deal.” But now it’s untruthful hyperbole.2025 June 28, Maureen Dowd, “Obfuscating on Obliterating”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

All 16 example sentences with hyperbole

Synonyms of hyperbole

Antonyms

Forms of hyperbole

pluralhyperboles

Plural of hyperbole: hyperboles

Origin of hyperbole

From Middle English iperbole, yperbole, from Latin hyperbolē, from Ancient Greek ὑπερβολή (huperbolḗ, “excess, exaggeration”), from ὑπέρ (hupér, “above”) + βάλλω (bállō, “to throw”, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH-). Doublet of hyperbola.

Words formed from hyperbole

Questions about hyperbole

What does hyperbole mean?
Hyperbole means deliberate overstatement, particularly extreme overstatement.
What is hyperbole in Hindi?
Hyperbole in Hindi is अत्युक्ति (atyukti), अतिशयोक्ति (atiśyokti). See Hyperbole meaning in Hindi.
How do you use hyperbole in a sentence?
"Nay, nay, good Sumach," interrupted the Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole, with patience[…]
What part of speech is hyperbole?
Hyperbole is a noun.
How do you pronounce hyperbole?
Hyperbole is pronounced /haɪˈpɜːbəli/ (UK).
What is the plural of hyperbole?
The plural of hyperbole is hyperboles.

Words near hyperbole in the dictionary

  1. hyperblock
  2. hyperbola
  3. hyperbolae
  4. hyperbolaeon
  5. hyperbolas
  6. hyperbole
  7. hyperboles
  8. hyperbolic
  9. hyperbolic angle
  10. hyperbolic angles
  11. hyperbolic color

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hyperbole (page history and authors); hyperbole (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hyperbole (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Hyperbole (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hyperbole (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); ಅತಿಶಯೊಕ್ತಿ (Kannada) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hyperbole.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hyperbole. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.