As I was swimming the other morning it seemed like I was travelling as smoothly as a dolphin through the water. Well, I guess that it is a bit of an exaggeration, a hyperbole. My technique at 6:00 am is not that good, nor am I anywhere near as fast as the water mammal. But I do love swimming in the morning.
A hyperbole is an extravagant amplification. The ice cream cone I ordered was a mile high, certainly much more than I could carry safely nor eat gracefully.
In the 5th century B.C., there was a politician named Hyperbolus living in Athens, Greece. He was known as a leader who made use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power. (Makes me think of a certain politician in the United States right now.) Now, one might be enticed to presume that his name played a role in the development of the English word hyperbole. But there does not seem to be any connection. Hyperbole does come from the Greek language, but it is derived from the verb hyperballein, meaning to exceed. This word is a combination of hyper, meaning beyond, and ballein, meaning to throw.
So, at the recent Olympics Canada won gold in both women’s and men’s hammer throw. Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg threw the hammer beyond everyone else in Paris. They both exceeded what everyone else was able to do. Thus, the ancient Greek word hyperballein literally applies to their winning throws. As hyperbole developed in the English language it emphasized the extreme aspect and became an intentional exaggeration that isn’t meant to be taken literally.
Hyperbole is not pronounced as we would expect a word that is spelled this way to behave. It begins with the prefix hyper, similar to hyperlink. But instead of having the accent, or emphasis, on the first syllable—HYE-per-link—it has the accent on the second syllable: hye-PER-buh-lee.
The bole is pronounced: buh-lee. This comes from the Greek huperbole, with an accent on the final vowel, which makes it pronounced like ee.
Hyperboles are used to make writing and speech more exciting using exaggeration. Using hyperbole gives an audience a sense of scale. Hyperboles can be used to accentuate the positive attributes and can also point out the dangerous issues of a subject.
We have been fence building for several hours. We have been fence building for an eternity. Both of these sentences express the same idea, but the second sentence uses hyperbole to make the sentence more thought-provoking. A reader doesn’t know exactly how long the fence building took, but they know it was a long time. They get to use their own imagination while determining the intended meaning.
It is important not to confuse or mislead people. It should be clear whether or not a statement is a hyperbole. Note to users: Consider using extreme embellishment or impossible feats in your hyperbole to make it abundantly clear that you are exaggerating.
There were 50 flies biting us when building the fence is an ambiguous hyperbole, as it is a possible occurrence. A clear hyperbole would be: There were a million flies biting us while working on the fence. This is clearly an impossible exaggeration, but it makes the point of many flies biting.
Here are some interesting hyperboles from thesaurus.com. Jim fell off the roof and broke every bone in his body. We looked forever for the remote but couldn’t find it. My sister will eat anything. That comment is the dumbest thing anyone has ever said. The explosion was loud enough to wake the dead. My dad will kill me if he finds out I failed my math test. I was sweating buckets while working outside today. Hurry up and hand me the scissors before I die of old age. My job is so easy that a monkey could do it. Our granddaughters are all little angels. (Now that is totally true.)
John would like to know if anyone has a sincere interest in a relevant word that he could possibly research for an upcoming column. If so, please send your requests to wordwisdom2021@gmail.com. Words will be selected according to relevance and research criteria. We cannot confirm that all words will be used.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
