July 03, 2011
- hyperbole (noun)
- \hye-PER-buh-lee\
- What does it mean?
- : extravagant exaggeration used to emphasize a point
- How do you use it?
- Of course John was thirsty, but it was hyperbole when he told us he could drink a whole swimming pool full of water.
- Are you a word wiz?
Hyperbole is an over-the-top exaggeration. One of the sentences below gives a perfect example of hyperbole. Which one is it?
You're a word wiz if you picked sentence C as the example of hyperbole, and that's no exaggeration! Lots of buildings are as tall as skyscrapers, so sentence A contains no hyperbole. And nine pounds isn't an unusual weight for a cat, so sentence B isn't hyperbolic either. It's perfectly reasonable that Dee might have seen 15 pigeons, so that's probably not hyperbole either. You can be sure, though, that Denise never REALLY ate a mile-high ice cream cone. She would never have been able to hold something so huge, never mind eat it! So answer C is the only example of hyperbole.
