Showing posts with label Hyperbole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hyperbole. Show all posts

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Hyperbole means gross exaggeration

When a person exaggerates a lot, we say a person is using hyperbole. For example, if I tell you that I ate a TON for lunch, that is a cliche form of hyperbole since you've heard it a million times and it's an exaggeration (though I did eat an individual gluten-free pizza and an organic ice cream bar and I am very over-full right now). It might feel like I ate a ton, but I certainly did not really do so! Hyperbole in this case does not do any damage to anyone; my using this sort of language is fine as long as I don't use it all the time; if I do, it will lose its effect and impact. However, some kinds of hyperbole or exaggeration can do damage to people. For example, when people associate certain physical or personality traits to a particular group of people, such as long noses to Jewish people or laziness to green people, prejudice can begin. Then, hyperbole can be a figure of speech that is dangerous and damaging. Please invent two examples of hyperbole. Make one be the beginning of a new form of prejudice that does not yet exist. Do not make the prejudice against a group of people but against something that you think is damaging such as excessive sugar or excess playing of games on the computer. Thanks.