Hyperbole is an
Name _____________________ BL __
Date ___________________________
It puts a picture into the "reader" mind. Hyperbole is frequently used in humorous
writing.
Example: He’s as tall as the Empire State Building
Hyperbole is used for emphasis or humorous effect. With hyperbole, an author makes a
point by overstating it.
Hyperbole is common in tall tales.
At three weeks, Paul Bunyan got his family into a bit of trouble kicking around his
little tootsies and knocking down something like four miles of standing timber.
Hyperbole is often used in descriptions. It emphasizes some qualities of a person or thing
by exaggerating them, as in this selection
The skin on her face was as thin and drawn as tight as the skin of onion and her
eyes were gray and sharp like the points of two picks.
—Flannery O’Connor, "Parker’s Back"
Hyperbole can also be used to describe a person’s emotions. In the following selection, a
boy is pulling a man up from a deep hole. See how hyperbole is used to describe the boy’s
thoughts as he struggles.
It was not a mere man he was holding, but a giant; or a block of granite. The pull
was unendurable. The pain unendurable.
—James Ramsey Ullman, "A Boy and a Man"
WHAT
IS EXAGGERATED IN THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES?
There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a
fishhook with.
—Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in Kin= Arthur's Court
People moved slowly then. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go,
nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries
of Maycomb County.
—Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Source:
http://www.dowlingcentral.com/MrsD/area/literature/Terms/hyperbole.html