hyperbole

noun

1. (rhetoric, uncountable)Deliberate or unintentional overstatement, particularly extreme overstatement.

   “Hyperbole soars too high, or creeps too low, Exceeds the truth, things wonderful to shew.”

   “The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence.”

   “"Nay, nay, good Sumach," interrupted the Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole, with patience[…]”

   “Of course the hymn has come to us from somewhere else, but I do not know from where; and the average native of our village firmly believes that it is indigenous to our own soil—which it can not be, unless it deals in hyperbole, for the nearest approach to a river in our neighborhood is the village pond.”

   “The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. […] That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

2. (countable)An instance or example of such overstatement.

   “[…]and when he ſpeakes, / 'Tis like a Chime a mending. With tearmes vnſquar' / Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropt, / Would ſeemes Hyperboles”

   “The honourable gentleman forces us to hear a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and hyperboles, Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort of eloquence?”

3. (countable, obsolete)A hyperbola.