Hyperbole

Hyperbole comes from the Greek hyper, "over" and bollein, "to throw."[1] Hyperbole is the act of "rhetorical exaggeration"[2] and the device is found numerous times in Greek texts. Aristotle provides an operational definition of hyperbole, explaining its application through metaphors and similes. But Aristotle also qualifies hyperbole, stating that it may be used to interject damaging emotion into a text which explains, "why angry people use them more than other people."[3] Aristotle exemplifies this use of hyperbole for a dramatic effect with Homer’s Iliad. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the two text examples Aristotle offers is that of Achilles, rejecting Agamemnon’s peace offering in Book IX.[4]

Contemporary academic K.J. Dover further assists our understanding of hyperbole as it was applied in ancient Greece. He interprets the use of hybris in Greek historian Plutarch’s Demosthenes. Actually practicing hybris was criminal, meaning that one treated a fellow citizen as if he or she were a foreigner. According to Dover, a citizen in Demosthenes’ time practiced hyperbole when he or she accused a fellow citizen of committing emotional hybris.[5]
After the age of Greek rhetoricians, the Romans commented further on the concept of hyperbole. Roman rhetorician Quintilian demonstrates a singularly lighthearted application for hyperbole, that of the joke. Quintilian offers an example about a man so tall he hit his head on the arch of Fabius.[6]

Hyperbole passed through the ancient era, established as a figure of speech for exaggeration, and often used to induce anger or humor in a text. Though hyperbole remained popular throughout the Renaissance, writers such as Erasmus and Thomas Wilson cautioned against hyperbole’s widespread employment, worried that hyperbole conflated truth and reality.[7]

Little has changed in hyperbole’s denotation. And for those who study the figure of speech today, hyperbole’s modern connotation often follows the misgivings of its predecessors and is portrayed negatively. For example, “HIV infection and circumcision: cutting through the hyperbole.”[8] Rhetorical scholarship indeed examines the moral application of the hyperbole, flagged first by Aristotle and his observation of angry men using hyperbole. Interestingly, even in an online article discussing writing guidelines, the National Communication Association advises writers to, “…avoid hyperbole and exclamation points. The tone of the article shouldn’t be overly enthusiastic or dramatic.”[9]

Hyperbole thus remains largely as the Greeks understood it. And after the thinking of Erasmus, today’s scholarship, too, regards the speech figure with some reservation.

[1] hyperbole. 2009. In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hyperbole
[2] Burton, G.O. (1996-2004). http://rhetoric.byu.edu. In Silvae Rhetoricae.
[3] Aristotle, The "Art" of Rhetoric, III.xi.16.
[4] Homer, Iliad 9.380-390.
[5] Dover, K.J. (1974). Greek popular morality in the time of Plato and Aristotle. Berkley: University of California Press.
[6] Quintilian, The "Institutio Oratoria", Vol. 2, VIII.vi.67.
[7] Stanivukovic, G. V. (2007). “Mounting Above the Truthe": On Hyperbole in English Renaissance Literature. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 43(1)
[8] Van Howe, R.S., Svoboda, S. J., Hodges, F.M. (2005). HIV infection and circumcision: cutting through the hyperbole. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 125, 6.
[9] NCA. (2009). http://www.natcom.org/NCA/files/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/000000000468/Guidelines%20for%20Front%20Page%20Articles.pdf