Explanation

Praising your favorite sports team is one thing, but if you call the team the most incredible group of humans ever to walk the earth, then you're going overboard and indulging in hyperbole. The hyper- in hyperbole means "beyond," so it's a good sign that the word has to do with going above and beyond what's necessary. Someone who gets hyperactive about something and ends up hyperventilating (breathing too hard) might be prone to the exaggerated style of speaking known as hyperbole. If you find yourself talking about the absolutely best (or worst) thing of all time, it's time to take it down a notch and cut down on the hyperbole.

Vocabulary lists containing hyperbole

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Literary Devices & Figures of Speech - Introductory

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Poetry: Literary Devices

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See Examples For:

Brad Gerstner, who is the head of the investment firm Altimeter Capital, posted pictures of Huang from the conference and accused Coxon of "ridiculous hyperbole".

From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2026

"It's not hyperbole to say the world wants what we have," he told AFP, calling diversification a "medium-term" strategy already paying dividends.

From Barron's ● Sep. 9, 2026

Chris Watling, chief market strategist at the London-based research boutique Longview Economics, does not admit to using newsstand hyperbole as a market indicator.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 4, 2026

The Supreme Court has held that true threats aren’t protected by the Constitution, but political hyperbole is—noting in a landmark decision that the “language of the political arena” is often “vituperative, abusive, and inexact.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026

Every writer faces the challenge of finding a superlative in the English word-hoard that has not been inflated by hyperbole and overuse.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

Critics thumbed thesauruses for hyperboles to rhapsodize about her pyrotechnics.

From New York Times ● Jan. 30, 2024

Our efforts to be informed were dominated by attention to the biggest headlines reporting the latest hyperboles and gutter developments, with little attention to the discussion of issues, positions or facts.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 17, 2017

Still, there was a lingering sense that the efforts were too little, too late, as their countrymen and -women carried on with the characteristic superlatives, hyperboles and extermination-related coinages.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 17, 2017

Maybe the surprise is increased by a bad choice of hyperboles in the first place.

From Scientific American ● Sep. 14, 2012

In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare has Berowne complain, “Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, / Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, / Figures pedantical; these summer flies / Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.”

From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith