Hyperbole: definition and examples

Hyperbole is exaggeration used on purpose, so obviously overstated that no reader takes it literally.

Hyperbole, from the Greek for "throwing beyond," is overstatement the reader is meant to see through: I've told you a million times. In fiction it does two jobs. It adds emphasis. It also reveals character, because what someone exaggerates shows what they care about.

Exaggeration everyone agrees to

Hyperbole works because writer and reader are in on it. Nobody believes a teenager who says she will literally die of embarrassment. The overstatement tells you how big the feeling is, not how big the facts are.

That shared understanding is also why hyperbole is not lying. It turns deceptive only where the reader expects literal truth, which in a novel almost never includes a character's outburst.

Examples

  • "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?"

    Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2, William Shakespeare

    Macbeth's guilt is too big for the literal truth. The whole ocean becomes the only measure that fits.

  • "I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not with all their quantity of love / Make up my sum."

    Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1, William Shakespeare

    Hamlet's number is absurd on purpose. At her grave, anything smaller would sound like an insult.

  • "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."

    Moby-Dick, Chapter 36, Herman Melville

    Ahab's hyperbole is his whole character in eight words: pride with no ceiling.

  • "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

    Matthew 19:24, King James Bible

    An impossible image makes an abstract warning concrete, which is why the line is still quoted.

Setting a hyperbole budget

Match the dose to the narrator. A breathless first-person teen can carry a lot of exaggeration and still sound true. A restrained literary narrator may earn one hyperbole in a chapter, which makes that one land harder.

Let exaggeration characterize. A character who says "the whole town" when she means three neighbors is telling you who she is. If a passage has drifted into too much, [Quick Edit](/features/quick-edit) takes a plain instruction like "tone the exaggeration down" and applies it inline.

Common mistakes

  • Exaggerating everything

    If every sentence runs at full volume, nothing stands out. Readers stop hearing emphasis at all.

  • Using stock hyperbole

    "A million times" and "starving to death" are so familiar they carry no energy. Invent one from the scene in front of you.

  • Leaving it believable

    Hyperbole has to be obviously untrue. An exaggeration a reader might accept reads as a factual error.

Common questions

Is hyperbole the same as lying?
No. A lie wants to be believed; hyperbole wants to be seen through. Speaker and listener both know the claim is not literal, which is why "I've told you a million times" fools no one.
What is the opposite of hyperbole?
Litotes, or understatement: calling a triumph "not bad." Writers often pair them, letting one character exaggerate while another undersells, which makes both sound more like themselves. ---

Related terms

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