Hyperbole Figure of Speech

Figures of speech are literary devices which are used to convey ideas that go beyond their literal meaning. In English, there are more than 200 different types of figures of speech.

Hyperbole is one of them.

Hyperbole Figure of Speech Meaning

Hyperbole is a figure of speech where a statement is overstated for a dramatic effect. Hyperbole is sometimes referred to as an overstatement.

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She has been warned thousands of times before. (A dramatic is added to the sentence by exaggerating the number of times she has been warned.)
Her awful singing voice made my ears bleed. (By saying ‘my ears bleed‘, the speaker aims to dramatically highlight the fact that the person concerned had an awful voice.)

Hyperbole Figure of Speech Examples

Following are some famous examples of Hyperbole Figure of Speech:

“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / Till China and Africa meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain / And the salmon sing in the street.”
—W.H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

“So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
—Franklin Roosevelt

“At that time Bogota was a remote, lugubrious city where an insomniac rain had been falling since the beginning of the 16th century.”
—Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Living to Tell the Tale

“Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson