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Hyperbole
If you don't watch this video, your efforts to understand English words will completely
and utterly fail.
You may as well give up on ever becoming completely fluent in English if you aren't going to watch
the rest of this.
I hope you understood that I was just exaggerating.
In fact, I was using what is called hyperbole.
I could suggest that this video may be good to watch to understand the meaning of the
English word hyperbole, but if I say you can't learn English without it, I'm overstating
the matter greatly, to say the least.
I'm making the video seem much more important and impressive than it actually is.
And that is the meaning of hyperbole.
Hyperbole is a noun meaning something written or spoken that makes something sound much
more important, more impressive, more urgent, more dangerous, etc., than it really is.
If I say I'm the most talented guitar player to ever live, that is also hyperbole.
The adjective form of hyperbole is hyperbolic.
My statement at the beginning of this video was a hyperbolic statement.
Although hyperbole can simply refer to any instance of gross exaggeration, in literature
or creative works it is often a figure of speech or a literary device used to express
humor or great emotion.
A good way to think of hyperbole is as vocabulary.com puts it: Extravagant exaggeration.
We use hyperbole all the time in English without even thinking about it and, in fact, without
other people even noticing it.
Hyperbole is a feature of idiomatic and colloquial language.
For example:
"I can't afford a bazillion dollars for a new car.
I'm on a tight budget."
"This box weighs a ton!"
"I don't want to drive all that way.
It's like a million miles."
"This is literally the worst day of my life."
Hyperbole is also a part of what we call a 'fish story' in English.
This is when someone claims to have caught a fish that was much larger than it really
was.
"That fish weighed as much as I do, I tell ya."
You'll find that all fish stories are, well, fish stories.
But, a fish story doesn't have to be about a fish.
It has become an idiom that refers to any such hyperbolic story.
Notes on Pronunciation
The prefix hyper means above, beyond, or super.
Hyperbole is pronounced differently than many other hyper words in English.
Normally, the stress is on the first syllable or the third syllable, as in hyperlink, hyperventilate,
hypertension.
Instead, the stress falls on the second syllable, per...hyperbole.
Also, you'll notice that while b-o-l-e seems like it should be pronounced like the word
bowl, it is pronounced bolee.
This pronunciation is similar to the original Greek word which influenced the Latin word
from which we derive the term.
Amazingly, there was an Athenian politician named Hperbolus during the 5th century B.C.
He was extremely prone to hyperbole and was constantly stoking the passions of the crowds
he spoke to.
But, can you believe that he actually had nothing to do with the history of this word?
Examples of How to Use Hyperbole in a Sentence
"I always thought that the hype about the genius of Steve Jobs was hyperbole.
I've seen nothing to convince me otherwise."
"If we don't stop them now, they will destroy our democracy.
This isn't mere hyperbole.
This is a clear and present danger."
"They claimed that their ads were simple hyperbole and that no reasonable person would think
that the claims were true.
However, the FTC didn't buy this argument and made the company pay a huge fine and stop
making the misleading and untrue claims."
"Some of the best jokes are based on hyperbole."
"The network is defending itself by saying that everybody knows that they rely on hyperbole
to entertain their audience."
"One of my pet peeves is the oft-used hyperbolic statement, 'it'll change your life.'"