Hyperbole (pronounced /haɪˈpɝːbəli/ hye-PER-buh-lee; "HYE-per-bowl" is a mispronunciation) comes from Greek "υπερβολή"=exaggeration and is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. A figure of speech, sometimes It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, and is not meant to be taken literally.

Hyperbole is used to create emphasis. In Typography, emphasis is the exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text&mdashto emphasise them It is a literary device often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. A literary technique or literary device is an identifiable Rule of thumb, convention or Structure that is employed in Literature

Some examples include:
these books weigh a ton. (weigh a great deal)
I could sleep for a year. (for a long time)

Antonyms to hyperbole include meiosis, litotes, understatement, and bathos (the 'let down' after a hyperbole in a phrase). In Lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male: female, long: short In Rhetoric, meiosis is a euphemistic Figure of speech that intentionally understates something or implies that it is lesser in significance or size In Rhetoric, litotes is a Figure of speech in which rather than making a certain statement directly a speaker expresses it even more effectively or achieves emphasis Understatement is a form of speech in which a lesser expression is used than what would be expected Bathos is from the Greek βάθος, meaning depth. As used in English it originally referred to a particular type of bad Poetry,

Derived from the Greek ὑπερβολή (literally 'overshooting' or 'excess'), it is a cognate of hyperbola. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Cognates in Linguistics are words that have a common origin They may occur within a language such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from In Geometry, a hyperbola ( Greek, "over-thrown" has several equivalent definitions

See Also

• Adynaton
• Irony
• Litotes
• Metaphor
• Simile
• Zillion

External links

• A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples
• Audio illustrations of hyperbole as figure of speech