Hyperbole Examples

A hyperbole is a figure of speech or a rhetorical device that is usually an exaggerated statement. It is used to evoke strong emotional response or create an effect to what is communicated. A hyperbole is a literary device which is used in poetry, casual talk and one can even find examples of it in the bible as well. Hyperboles are common in love poems, where exaggeration of the beauty and other traits of the lover take place. It is also used to describe the heroic deeds of kings and knights. If hyperboles fail to create the dramatic sense of the poetic piece, exaggeration may seem really comical.

Hyperboles augment reality and carry the listener or the reader beyond the boundaries of cogent thoughts. People often confuse it with a simile or a metaphor, because a hyperbole is also used to compare two objects. Read on for a few examples of hyperboles here.

Examples Of Hyperboles

They ran like greased lightning.
His feet were as big as a barge.
I ate the whole cow.
Running faster than the speed of light.
He is older than the hills.
I have told you a million times not to lie!
I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.
It is going to take a bazillion years to get through medical School.
He's 900 years old.
Her brain is the size of a pea.
If I don't get these jeans, I will DIE!
She cried for days.
My car is a million years old.
The whole world was staring at me.
It took light years for this to work.
He's got tons of money.
He is as skinny as a toothpick.
I had to walk fifteen miles uphill both ways, in snow five feet deep.
I waited in line for centuries.
It took him two seconds to drive here.
I don't have two cents to rub together.
She is as big as an elephant!
Your father is so low he has to look up to tie his shoes.
Your mama's hair is so short she could stand on her head and her hair wouldn't touch the ground.

Examples Of Hyperboles From Literature

“Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, in “The Concord Hymn”
“There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with.” By Mark Twain in “ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”
“It was not a mere man he was holding, but a giant; or a block of granite. The pull was unendurable. The pain unendurable.” By James Ramsey Ullman in "A Boy and a Man"
“It's a slow burg—I spent a couple of weeks there one day.” by Carl Sandburg in "The People, Yes"
“Why does a boy who’s fast as a jet
Take all day—and sometimes two—
To get to school?” by John Ciardi in the poem "Speed Adjustments"
“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away” Taken from the Bible- Mathew 5:29
“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” Taken from the Bible - John 12:19

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