Hyperbole or Exaggeration
Hyperbole or Exaggeration :
By this figure, things are represented as greater or less and better or worse than they really are. Such language is not meant to be taken literally.
For example :
1. Tons of money
2. A thousand thanks
3. A thousand and one things
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. (Shakespeare)
I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up the sum. (Shakespeare)
Numbering sands and drinking oceans dry.
The sky shrunk upward with unusual dread,
And trembling Tiber dived beneath his bed.
(Dryden)
David in his lament for Saul and Jonathan says,
They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions! (Old Testament)
The terror of a scout at the sudden appearance of the enemy is thus described in Ossian : I saw their chief tall as a rock of ice, his spear - the blasted firr, his shield - the rising moon, he sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the hill. (Macpherson)
Hyperbole or Exaggeration :
The Sentences Index
