Hyperbole
hyperbole \hye-PER-buh-lee\ (noun)
: extravagant exaggeration
Example:
The food in the restaurant
was quite good, but it couldn't live up to the hyperbole
that had been used to describe it in the advertisement.
In the 5th century B.C., a
rabble-rousing Athenian, a politician named Hyperbolus,
often made exaggerated promises and claims that whipped
people into a frenzy. Even though it sounds appropriate,
Hyperbolus's name did not play a role in the development
of the modern English word "hyperbole." That noun comes
to us from Greek (by way of Latin), but from the Greek
verb "hyperballein," meaning "to exceed;" not from the
name of the Athenian demagogue.
For a description of poetry terms, see
from Merriam-Webster's Word-of-the-Day
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